WOMAN  FROM  BONDAGE 
TO  FREEDOM 


RALCY  HUSTED  BELL 


SOME  OTHER  BOOKS 
By  DR.  BELL 


TAORMINA 

THE  WORTH  OP  WORDS 

ART-TALKS  WITH  EANGER 

THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  PAINTING 

THE  EELIGION  OP  BEAUTY 

AALA  DEANE  AND  OTHER  POEMS 

WORDS  OF  THE  WOOD,  POEMS 

THE  CHANGING  VALUES  OP  ENGLISH 

SPEECH 
SPIRITISM 

ETC. 


WOMAN  FROM 
BONDAGE  TO  FREEDOM 


1921 

THE  CRITIC  AND  GUIDE  COMPANY 

12  MOUNT  MORRIS  PARK  WEST 

NEW  YORK 


OOPYWSHTZD,   1921, 

BY  EALCY  HUSTED  BELL 


Press  of 

J.  J.  Little  &  Ives  Company 
New  York,  U.  S.  A. 


TO 

AEKELL  EOGEE  McMICHAEL,  A.M.,  M.D., 
A  GREAT  PHYSICIAN,  A   COURTLY  GENTLE- 
MAN, AND  A  CORDIAL  FRIEND 


1561 284 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

PREFACE bt 

EARLIEST  MANKIND 1 

WOMAN  IN  PREHISTORY 17 

"\VOMAN  IN  THE  BORDERLAND  OF  HISTORY     ....  41 

WOMAN  AND  RELIGION 71 

WOMAN  AND  THE  LAW 105 

OVERMAN  AND  UNDERMAN 137 

THE  FEMINIST  MOVEMENT 155 

WOMAN  SUFFRAGE ,  169 

ETHICS  OF  MARRIAGE,  &c 189 

BIRTH  CONTROL 199 

WOMEN  AND  THE  GREAT  WAR 207 

MENTAL  ATTITUDE  .  215 


PEEFACE 

|ATUEALLY,  a  work  of  this  kind 
must  be  abridged.  "When  woman 
started  from  her  ancient  bondage  for 
modern  freedom,  she  hit  a  long  trail. 
I  shall  try  to  blaze  that  trail.  She  has  been  on 
the  way  some  time,  but  she  never  knew  where 
she  was  going — nobody  does.  Progress  has  no 
ultimate  goal — it  can 't  have.  It  has  an  instinct. 
It  is  a  wanderer.  It  passes  through  successive 
zones  that  are  repeated.  They  can  not  be 
infinite  in  number  and  diversity,  because  being 
is  limited  in  its  reactions.  There  is  not  even 
conception  of  infinity.  Being  is  necessarily 
provincial.  It  is  characterized  by  its  surround- 
ings. Cosmic  consciousness  is  an  idea.  God  is 
hope.  Immortality  is  a  dream.  Is  there  truth 
in  the  idea?  Is  there  reality  in  the  hope?  Is 
there  prophecy  in  the  dream?  No  one  knows. 
The  very  soul  of  our  race  is  dumb,  or,  at  best, 
inarticulate  in  its  cries  and  vague  in  its  longings. 
In  the  long  run,  progress  may  be  like  a  dog 
chasing  his  tail.  Activity  is  good  for  the  dog 
even  if  he  misses  the  rabbit;  but  if  we  assume 


X  PREFACE 

that  he  will  catch  the  rabbit,  what  then?  Shall 
he  stop,  or  catch  another  and  another  forever 
and  ever?  Still,  if  progress  turns  out  to  be 
only  a  movement  with  an  active  instinct,  I  like 
to  think  that  the  instinct  makes  for  well-being. 
The  bewildering  fact  is  that  it  doesn't.  For 
nothing  so  bedevils  us  as  that  which  we  call 
progress.  Let  us  say  then  that  bedevilment  is 
good  (for  the  soul)  since  we  can  not  abate  it. 
Let  us  go  in  for  progress,  as  everybody  does. 

Here  the  trouble  begins.  Each  knows  the 
road  that  all  the  world  should  take,  but  no 
two  roads  are  alike.  I  see  one  that  looks  prom- 
ising. It  seems  to  be  a  continuation  of  the 
trail,  leading  to  broader  human  rights  from  the 
narrower  rights  of  sex  or  class.  This  road 
passes  I  hope  to  an  equal  spiritual  dignity  of 
manhood  and  womanhood,  opening  up  the  pos- 
sibilities of  human  nature  through  orderly 
activity. 

Of  course,  no  wise  woman  travels  alone  if  she 
can  help  it.  Nature  loves  nothing  better  than 
mating.  Nature  is  hard-headed.  According  to 
her,  almost  any  kind  of  a  mate  is  better  than 
none.  In  general,  her  children  obey  her, — in  one 
way  or  another.  Those  who  do  not  obey  the 
mother  are  weaned  before  it  is  good  for  them; 
that  is  to  say,  they  are  runted  out  of  existence. 

So  we  find  that  woman  in  her  trail  from 
relative  bondage  to  comparative  freedom  had 


PREFACE  XI 

company  all  along.  She  was  both  helped  and 
hindered  by  her  companion ;  but  she  was  helped 
more  than  hindered,  because  her  very  hindrance 
often  was  a  help. 

At  all  events,  a  stage  has  been  reached  where 
no  one  doubts  the  desirability  of  equal  oppor- 
tunity and  equal  responsibility  of  men  and 
women  under  the  law ;  and  nobody  should  ques- 
tion the  wisdom  of  their  equal  moral  obligations 
to  society,  on  given  conditions.  There  also  is 
common  agreement  on  the  right  to  freedom  of 
speech  within  the  limits  of  decency,  regardless 
of  sex ;  and  no  one  now  who  loathes  caste  doubts 
the  fitness  of  women  for  full  citizenship  with 
men. 

When  women  discuss  with  each  other  the 
established  order  of  things,  they  accomplish 
little;  but  when  men  and  women  together  ex- 
amine established  orders  with  care  and  discuss 
them  publicly  with  freedom,  if  not  always  with 
judgment,  much  is  accomplished.  The  inter- 
ested parties  find  points  of  agreement.  In- 
trenched systems  yield  to  the  slow  attrition  of 
agitation.  Deep  in  our  hearts  we  know  that 
agitation  is  not  pernicious  when  it  quickens 
the  social  conscience;  that  no  good  system  can 
be  harmed  very  much  by  agitators ;  and  that  no 
bad  system  should  be  exempt  from  criticism. 
This  is  true  of  all  systems — religious,  economic, 
and  the  others. 


Xll  PREFACE 

The  ever-increasing  recognition  of  woman's 
right  to  a  voice  in  public  council  is  beginning 
to  show  good  effects.  Cosmopolitanism  is 
awakening.  Fanaticism  is  disappearing  from 
patriotism.  We  are  beginning  to  see  that  the 
love  of  mankind  develops  from  a  proper  regard 
for  the  interests  of  home,  community,  country. 
If  it  is  true  that  an  interest  in  the  welfare  of 
neighbors  does  not  impede  nor  impair  one's 
patriotic  impulses,  then  patriotism  should 
strengthen,  rather  than  weaken  one's  love  for 
humanity.  This  truth  is  exemplified  in  the  lives 
of  all  great  men  and  women. 

It  is  natural  for  love  to  radiate  from  the 
hearth — to  link  up  with  kin,  friend,  and  fellow, 
and  thus  to  extend  from  a  personal  center  to 
the  impersonal  circumference,  if  it  would  en- 
compass all  that  lies  between.  But  as  the  love 
of  family,  friend,  and  neighbor  does  not  imply 
the  hatred  of  strangers,  neither  should  the  love 
of  country  breed  intolerance  of  the  patriotism 
in  other  lands.  For  if  patriotism  is  right  in 
one  country,  it  is  right  in  all  countries.  Those 
of  us  who  heartily  accept  "Old  Glory"  as  the 
hallowed  symbol  of  our  national  aspirations, 
reverently  salute  other  flags. 

Woman  knows  better  than  man  that  love, 
like  visual  perception,  decreases  in  definition 
as  the  horizon  broadens.  Emotion  tempers 
justice  both  in  man  and  woman,  but  more  in 


PEEFACE  Xlll 

woman  than  in  man.  Therefore  a  greater  fem- 
inine element  in  the  judiciary  would  be  an  im- 
provement. Flexible  emotion  is  better  for 
society  than  inflexible  justice  is  for  anything. 
Absolute  justice  would  wipe  us  all  out — the 
judges  with  the  rest.  There  are  many  kinds 
of  justice;  and  until  we  master  them  all  we 
can  not  hope  to  become  civilized.  It  is  not 
humanly  possible,  for  instance,  to  mete  out 
precisely  the  same  quality  of  justice  to  friend 
and  foe;  if  it  were,  friendship  would  be  an 
empty  pretense.  The  same  rule  of  justice  can 
not  be  applied  to  the  halt  and  the  fit,  to  the 
blind  and  those  that  see,  to  the  weak  and  the 
strong.  The  architect  of  this  world  made  no 
provision  for  a  Hall  of  Justice;  and  for  that 
reason  perhaps  we  have  failed  to  establish  so 
much  as  a  single  court  of  justice  on  earth.  Even 
our  worship  of  abstract  justice  is  a  form  of 
fetishism.  Many  other  things  are  as  important 
as  justice  is  to  our  human  condition;  and  one 
of  these  is  an  elastic  emotion  that  has  a  healthy 
rebound.  Only  a  heartless  machine  could  judge 
alike  the  next-door  neighbor  and  a  stranger 
on  the  far-away  steppes  of  Manchuria;  yet  only 
a  savage  would  interpret  the  kindly  feeling  for 
the  one  into  terms  of  cruelty  to  the  other.  In  a 
word,  unqualified  universal  eternal  justice  is 
the  cry  of  a  mad  soul  debauched  with  idealism. 


PKEFACE 

Nobody  wants  it ;  nothing  deserves  it, — least  of 
all  the  human  being. 

Women  are  the  essential  religionists  of  the 
race.  They  are  as  subject  to  false  gods  as  to 
the  effects  of  the  moon.  Therein  lie  their 
political  instability,  their  economic  weakness, 
and,  as  a  sex,  their  unfitness  to  govern.  Owing 
to  no  fault  of  their  own,  they  have  been  slaves 
too  long  to  be  good  masters.  I  am  glad  for 
every  slave  that  becomes  a  master ;  but  I  shrink 
from  a  master  that  has  been  a  slave.  There- 
fore, firmly  believing  in  the  woman  's  movement, 
also  I  believe  in  the  man's.  I  think  man  and 
woman  should  move  together,  or,  what  amounts 
to  the  same  thing,  synchronously.  Each  sex 
should  do  that  which  it  can  do  better  than  the 
other  sex.  Man  and  woman  must  perform  to- 
gether, but,  if  they  would  get  on,  each  must  do 
the  thing  that  each  is  adapted  for  by  the  nat- 
ural order  of  existence.  For  everything  that 
interests  them  jointly  is  an  elaboration  of  sex 
divergence  into  sexual  conjunction. 

Some  of  these  things  I  shall  try  to  set  forth 
whilst  blazing  the  trail  here  and  there  from 
woman's  bondage  to  freedom.  Incidentally 
among  other  topics,  I  shall  discuss  the  freedom 
of  choice  in  mating  and  in  the  bearing  of  chil- 
dren. The  ethics  of  marriage,  the  desirability 
of  easy  divorce,  and  the  hideous  evil  of  prosti- 
tution will  be  lightly  touched  in  passing;  but 


PREFACE  XV 

no  matter  how  much  we  cry  between  the  silences 
of  yesterday  and  to-morrow,  the  long  trail  will 
go  forward  just  the  same  into  the  unknown  gen- 
erations of  the  world.  For  still 

"We  are  the  ancients  of  the  earth, 
And  in  the  morning  of  our  times." 


WOMAN  FROM 
BONDAGE  TO  FREEDOM 

EAELIEST  MANKIND 

HE  earliest  status  of  woman  is  un- 
known. From  our  knowledge  of 
early  mankind,  however,  we  may 
speculate  on  the  remote  problems  of 
sex.  At  the  dawn  of  humanity  perhaps  there 
were  no  problems  of  that  kind.  In  the  be- 
ginning, sex  cleavage  was  expressed  merely  in 
beast-like  motherhood  and  fatherhood. 

Everything  depends  from  something  else. 
The  earliest  human  beings  were  aristocrats; 
they  had  attained  a  high  and  a  secure  position 
in  life  as  it  was  at  that  time.  They  were  be- 
ginning to  walk  around  mostly  on  their  hind 
legs.  Some  of  them  actually  strutted.  I  really 
think  they  did,  because  our  strutting  started 
sometime  and  it  may  as  well  have  been  then. 
Also  the  dawn  of  ancestral  pride  may  have 
broken  on  their  waking  minds  at  about  the  same 
period;  for  they  were  the  ancestors  of  all  our 

kind. 

1 


Z  WOMAN    FROM   BONDAGE   TO    FREEDOM 

Their  crests  were  thinning  frontal  bones ; 

Their  coats  of  arms  were  hairy  hides ; 

Their  proud  estates  were  clubs  and  stones, — 

And  we  inherit  all,  besides 

Their  pride  of  blood  that  still  abides. 

Where  they  originated,  no  one  knows.  It  is 
probable  that  the  ancestors  of  mankind  lived 
in  the  forests  of  the  great  plains  of  Southern 
Asia,  or  perhaps  on  the  Mongolian  plateau. 
Their  westward  migration  must  have  begun 
ages  before  the  human  stage  was  reached. 
Anthropologists  believe,  however,  that  human 
traits  were  first  developed  in  the  East  during 
an  extremely  early  period.  For  this  reason  we 
repeat  the  old  saw,  "Asia  was  the  cradle  of  our 
race. ' y 

The  aristocracy  of  to-day  suffers  no  humili- 
ation from  the  fact  that  anthropoid  apes  and 
men  sprang  from  a  common  stock.  Time  is  gra- 
cious: it  softens  grief  and  it  assuages  the 
shame  that  stings  like  an  adder's  tooth  from 
graves  forgot.  The  divergence  between  ape 
and  man  began  so  long  ago  that  now  the  blood 
of  neither  contaminates  that  of  the  other.  An 
occasional  reversion  to  type  is  momentarily 
disconcerting;  but  we  have  learned  that  every- 
thing reasonable  may  be  borne  by  rational 
beings ;  and  there  is  balm  in  the  belief  that  the 
racial  cleavage  is  ever  widening. 

The  study  of  our  remote  ancestry  takes  us 


EARLIEST    MANKIND  6 

back  to  heroic  times  when  social  distinctions,  or 
the  lack  of  them,  forced  men  and  women  to  be 
neither  liars  nor  hypocrites.  They  were  frankly 
what  they  wrere.  They  lived  in  happy  freedom 
from  the  wiles  of  professional  religionists ;  and 
there  were  no  capitalists  in  those  days  to  ex- 
ploit them,  nor  labor  organizations  to  pester 
them.  There  were  neither  kings  nor  slaves, 
riches  nor  poverty.  Human  parasites  and  pro- 
hibitionists and  politicians  had  not  begun  to 
breed,  because  social  filth  had  not  yet  been  de- 
posited by  civilization.  To  those  blessed  asons 
we  must  hark  back  if  we  would  be  happy  in  our 
dreams. 

Although  our  common  ancestral  stock  is  not 
precisely  known,  we  suspect  one  branch  of  the 
Old  World  primates.  It  is  unnecessary  to  try 
to  follow  this  branch  down  through  the  an- 
cestral anthropoids  of  Egypt,  however  interest- 
ing it  might  be  to  do  so.  The  mists  of  the 
Early  Tertiary  Period  are  too  thick  for  clear 
vision.  But  humanly  considered,  the  most  im- 
portant event  in  Time,  which  Pythagoras  called 
the  soul  of  our  world,  occurred  in  this  period ; 
for  it  gave  to  us  our  remote  Pliocene  ancestors, 
already  fast  running  humanward  through  the 
dim  ages. 

Our  family  tree  is  a  big  one.  It  has  many 
distinct  branches.  The  earlier  branches  were 
formed  in  the  vast  continental  region  now 


4  WOMAN   FROM   BONDAGE   TO   FREEDOM 

called  Eurasia.  During  the  Old  Stone  Age 
some  of  these  branches  crept  over  to  Western 
Europe;  some  became  extinct  while  they  still 
were  in  a  prehuman  state,  and  others  long  after 
they  had  become  distinctly  human. 

Beginning  now  anywhere  in  the  well-defined 
human  zone  of  development,  let  us  try  to  vis- 
ualize conditions  in  remote  prehistoric  ages. 
At  first  thought  it  seems  hopeless  to  expect  more 
than  a  fanciful  picture ;  and  if  we  were  to  rely 
solely  on  facts  relating  to  contemporary  groups 
of  savages  we  should  fail  to  get  a  true  picture. 
For  although  some  of  these  groups  virtually 
live  in  the  distant  past,  they  differ  in  many 
vital  respects  from  similar  groups  living  no 
longer  ago  than  thirty  or  forty  thousand  years. 

Fortunately,  we  have  a  great  deal  of  data 
gathered,  it  is  true,  in  fragments  slowly  and 
laboriously,  but  from  many  reliable  sources. 
These  data  must  be  assembled,  and  from  them 
we  must  make  our  deductions.  This  process 
will  give  us  the  groundwork  or  scenario.  Some 
knowledge  of  the  principles  governing  the  con- 
duct of  human  beings  in  their  struggles  with 
the  environment,  and  their  rebounds  resulting 
from  these  activities,  together  with  some  under- 
standing of  their  relations  with  each  other — 
relations  which  were  slowly  crystallized,  as  it 
were,  by  the  laws  of  aggroupment — will  enable 
us  to  produce  the  film  of  a  mental  moving- 


EARLIEST    MANKIXD  O 

picture  which  shall  visualize  to  us  the  unknown 
past  almost  as  truthfully  as  contemporary  life 
and  incident  may  be  thrown  upon  the  screen. 

Before  making  the  pictures,  let  us  see  how 
we  can  piece  together  the  scenario  and  where 
we  get  the  material.  For  the  sake  of  conveni- 
ence, we  will  lay  the  scene  in  Western  Europe 
at  a  time  when  the  beings  who  inhabited  that 
region  were  as  distinctively  human  as  are  we 
ourselves.  For,  during  the  Old  Stone  Age,  man 
already  had  received  the  heritage  which,  for 
short,  we  call  the  soul. 

During  many  ages  the  prehuman  ancestors 
of  man  had  aspired,  subconsciously  perhaps,  to 
an  upright  carriage.  For  ages,  man  himself 
had  known  the  benefit  of  the  erect  posture.  His 
changed  physical  attitude  was,  in  some  mys- 
terious manner,  the  forerunner  of  his  spiritual 
attitude.  He  was  beginning  to  look  toward  the 
stars.  But  the  slow  change  from  four  legs 
to  two  did  not  carry  with  it  unalloyed  bless- 
ings. As  man  arose  from  the  more  or  less 
horizontal  to  the  perpendicular  posture,  he  be- 
gan to  hope,  to  dream,  to  laugh,  and  to  weep. 
Spiritual  suffering  came  not  through  the  "fall" 
of  man  but  through  his  rise.  His  new  posture 
also  imposed  anatomical  penalties,  the  effects 
of  which  have  not  yet  passed  away.  The  ab- 
dominal cavity,  for  instance,  is  ill-suited  to 
carry  the  viscera  in  an  upright  posture.  But 


6  WOMAN   FROM   BONDAGE   TO   FREEDOM 

the  liberation  of  the  arms  in  locomotion;  man's 
ability  to  travel  erect  on  two  hind-limbs;  and 
the  transfer  of  the  anthropoid  function  of  the 
big-toe  of  the  fore-foot  to  that  of  an  opposable 
thumb  of  the  human  hand,  were  an  enormous 
recompense  for  the  ills  suffered  through  the 
change.  From  the  ability  to  suffer  as  a  man 
came  his  faculty  to  enjoy  as  a  god.  His  new 
sorrows  broke  into  ripples  of  laughter;  his 
horizon  broadened ;  his  spirit  longed  for  wings. 

For  ages,  man's  brain  had  been  helped  in 
its  development  by  the  advantages  of  his  op- 
posable thumb,  perfectly  capable  of  co-operat- 
ing with  each  of  his  four  fingers.  The  hand  had 
become  an  efficient  assistant  of  the  brain.  The 
more  he  used  his  hands,  the  more  he  stimu- 
lated the  development  of  his  brain;  and  the 
more  his  brain  developed,  the  more  skillful 
became  his  hands.  "We  utilize  this  reaction  be- 
tween hand  and  brain  even  to-day  in  the  train- 
ing of  children. 

For  ages,  the  brain  had  been  growing  and 
undergoing  adjustments  of  mass  suitable  to 
superanimal  needs.  One  of  the  most  marvel- 
lous acquirements  of  the  human  brain  was  its 
power  of  speech  in  one  little  area  of  either 
hemisphere.  In  the  right-handed  person,  this 
speech-center  became  localized  in  the  left.  A 
little  spot,  situated  in  what  is  called  the  convo- 
lution of  Broca,  had  become  susceptible  to  an 


EAELIEST   MANKIND  7 

acquired  change  that  made  speech  possible. 
Thus  man  found  himself  endowed  with  the  gift 
of  articulate  speech.  Without  going  into  the 
reasons  why,  this  could  only  have  come  about 
through  the  use  of  his  hands  during  his  in- 
dividual and  racial  childhood. 

Yet  strangely  enough,  the  faculty  of  speech 
is  not  congenital.  Man  is  born  as  dumb  as 
any  other  animal;  but  unlike  other  animals,  he 
is  born  with  the  will-power  of  bringing  forth 
in  his  brain  a  faculty  that  sets  him  apart  from 
all  the  beasts  of  the  earth.  Still,  no  language 
ever  came  to  him  spontaneously.  Every  word 
was  born  of  a  need.  His  mind  kissed  his  brain 
and  words  blossomed  from  his  lips.  Nor  did 
the  words  issue  merely  as  sounds,  but  they 
came  full-fledged  as  verbs,  nouns,  and  other 
parts  of  speech  which  make  up  a  language  in  its 
infancy. 

The  development  of  the  faculty  of  speech  was 
not  owing  to  any  difference  in  brain-structure, 
since  anatomically  it  is  the  same  with  several 
groups  of  primates.  But  in  man's  brain,  the 
particles  of  gray  matter  in  a  part  of  the  cortex 
when  subjected  to  the  incessant  repetition  of 
certain  stimuli  develop  the  power  of  speech. 
Why  is  this?  We  say,  rather  loosely,  that  the 
personality  longs  to  communicate  with  its  fel- 
low in  accordance  with  one  of  the  feminine 
instincts  of  the  race.  The  first  effort  to  speak 


8  WOMAN   FROM   BONDAGE   TO   FREEDOM 

was  a  gestnre;  and  the  first  "language"  was 
not  of  the  tongue,  but  of  the  hand — a  gestural 
speech.  Thus  language  was  born  of  the  hand ; 
and  spoken  language,  even  in  its  most  perfect 
form,  still  retains  a  large  gestural  element. 
The  source  of  words  is  in  the  mind ;  their  im- 
pellant  force  is  personality  urged  by  the  inter- 
action between  need  and  longing.  Words  are 
inventions  of  the  mind,  which  the  brain,  the 
nerves,  and  the  muscles  have  learned  to  use. 

During  the  long  period  from  somewhere  well 
within  the  Miocene  and  extending  through  the 
Pliocene  Age,  a  steady  and  coincident  develop- 
ment took  place  of  the  hand,  the  brain,  the 
powers  of  upright  locomotion,  and  of  speech. 
Already,  as  we  have  seen,  in  Early  Quarternary 
Times  this  development  had  reached  the  flower 
called  human. 

At  this  time  we  find  our  prehistoric  human 
ancestors  in  Europe.  They  walk  as  we  walk; 
they  have  our  hands  and  brains.  Their  speech 
is  rudimentary,  but  the  brain-centers  related 
to  the  higher  senses  are  well  developed,  and 
they  control  perfectly  all  motions  of  the  bodily 
members.  The  anterior  centers  of  the  brain  are 
keenly  awake,  and  they  have  long  been  busy 
in  the  hoarding  of  experience  and  the  develop- 
ing of  ideas.  Fifty  thousand  or  more  years 
ago  these  groups  of  intelligent  human  beings 
possessed  faculties  and  powers  in  all  essentials 


EARLIEST   MANKIND  9 

" modern",  though  still  in  the  dawn  of  educa- 
tion. These  folk  saw  as  we  see,  felt  as  we 
feel,  and  they  otherwise  functioned  as  we  func- 
tion to-day.  They  were  men  and  women  with 
our  emotions,  hopes,  and  dreams.  They  were 
bound  to  our  cycle  of  childhood,  vigor,  and  senil- 
ity— beings  of  our  own  intellectual  timber,  more 
roughly  hewn  perhaps  and  more  ruggedly 
joined. 

Looking  back  beyond  these  racial  groups 
through  the  concentric  plenitude  of  time,  we  see 
others  vaguely — others  still  that  are  intelli- 
gent and  still  of  an  Eastern  origin,  yet  ever 
lower  as  the  period  recedes,  until  the  earliest 
ancestry  of  man  is  lost  in  brutedom. 

During  a  period  covering  more  than  a  hun- 
dred thousand  years,  reaching  to  the  dawn  of 
human  culture,  Europe  has  been  the  habitat 
of  man.  The  record  of  his  residence  is  un- 
broken ;  and  the  knowledge  of  his  environment, 
of  his  life,  and  of  his  art  is  virtually  complete. 
We  know  that  he  has  been  manufacturing  im- 
plements for  upwards  of  125,000  years.  We 
know  the  varieties  and  the  habits  of  the  animals 
that  he  knew;  and  we  are  familiar  with  the 
vegetal  life  that  surrounded  him  during  all 
that  time.  Through  this  knowledge  we  are  en- 
abled to  visualize  the  status  of  early  woman- 
hood. 

The  various  elements  of  our  knowledge  cov- 


10          WOMAN   FROM   BONDAGE   TO   FREEDOM 

ering  this  almost  inconceivable  lapse  of  years 
could  be  gathered  only  from  many  different 
sources  by  many  diligent  and  well-equipped 
students.  And  then  it  is  necessary  to  make  a 
synthetic  study  of  the  facts  gathered  from  a 
careful  investigation  of  plant  and  animal  life, 
of  climate,  of  geography  and  geology,  of  relics 
and  remains,  of  mental  development,  and  of  the 
physical  modifications  of  the  different  racial 
groups,  of  their  arts  and  industries  which  con- 
nect them  with  their  surroundings  and  which 
reveal  the  relations  between  the  intellectual  and 
the  material  world. 

"We  may  look  into  the  mirror  of  time  for 
reflections  of  eternity;  but  we  must  interpret 
these  reflections  in  thought ;  and  our  chronology 
can  not  be  founded  on  mere  conjecture.  We 
know,  for  example,  that  the  Old  Stone  Age  was 
contemporaneous  with  the  Glacial  Epoch.  This 
gives  us  a  time-scale  in  the  snow-levels  and 
consequent  temperatures  which  conditioned 
mammalian  life.  With  the  help  of  such  and 
countless  other  facts,  we  may  determine  the 
order  of  succession  of  species  and,  in  general, 
the  order  of  their  physical  modifications.  We 
know  that  the  Ice  Age  of  Europe  was  multiple ; 
that  there  were  Glacial  and  Interglacial  Stages. 
This  knowledge  supplies  the  means  of  comput- 
ing the  grand  divisions  of  time,  whilst  the  de- 
velopment of  the  flint  industry,  the  progress  of 


EAKLIEST   MANKIND  11 

invention,  of  art,  and  of  the  chase  afford  us  a 
fair  working-knowledge  of  the  subdivisions  of 
time. 

The  imagination  is  quickened  by  a  contempla- 
tion of  the  art  and  the  industry  of  a  people 
who  vanished  many  scores  of  thousands  of 
years  ago.  The  same  stars  are  overhead,  the 
same  earth  is  underfoot,  the  same  gray  old 
ocean  moans  upon  the  shore;  but  all  else,  how 
changed!  Verily,  life  is  a  sea  of  changing 
clouds  bounded  by  the  infinite  mysteries  of 
generation  and  death. 

Nothing  else  is  so  universal  and  so  constant 
as  change.  Nothing  happens  without  it.  Change 
is  the  archagitator  of  cosmic  life.  It  is  op- 
posed to  spiritual  stasis,  to  moral  stagnation, 
to  intellectual  inertia.  Is  progress  only  a  phase 
of  change,  or  is  change  the  very  soul  of  prog- 
ress? We  only  know  that  the  spirit  of  change 
thrills  the  established  order  with  aspiration 
for  a  better  order;  and  that  it  enables  man  to 
use  the  imperfections  of  all  his  systems  as 
stepping-stones.  Change  is  elemental — coeval 
with  life.  Change  is  the  sole  hope  of  death — 
the  only  star  that  shines  in  the  night  of  mortal 
tragedy.  Change  is  the  only  promise  that  the 
gods  have  given  to  men;  and  if  it  is  read 
sympathetically,  it  gives  us  hope. 

And  so  you  see  that  every  new  age  proceeds 
from  an  older  just  as  a  child  issues  from  the 


12         WOMAN   FROM   BONDAGE   TO   FREEDOM 

parent.  There  is  a  harmony  in  all  the  epochs 
of  the  world,  a  harmony  that  seems  like  a  song 
of  the  supreme  voice  of  the  universe.  One  re- 
ligion gives  way  to  another,  not  always  a  bet- 
ter. For  change  has  rhythm,  and  progress  has 
rhythm ;  and  no  advance  is  continuous  of  level, 
of  even  intensity.  Only  the  rhythm  passes 
through  progressive  periods ;  and  thus  progress 
is  best  seen  in  large-scale  perspective.  One 
race  suceeds  another.  In  the  lines  of  Pope : 

"Like  leaves  on  trees  the  race  of  man  is  found, — 
Now  green  in  youth,  now  withering  on  the  ground ; 
Another  race  the  following  spring  supplies: 
They  fall  successive,  and  successive  rise. '  * 

One  philosophy  makes  room  for  another.  One 
system  of  economics  displaces  another.  Species 
supplant  species.  And  why?  Because  change 
is  cosmic,  eternal,  rhythmic,  and,  we  hope,  pro- 
gressive. All  our  shining  achievements — every 
thought  and  act  individually  and  collectively 
expressed  in  whatever  form;  in  mechanics,  in 
chemistry,  in  art,  in  science,  in  ethics,  in  eco- 
nomics— every  one  is  as  a  bit  of  cosmic  dust 
energised  by  the  spirit  of  change. 

One  of  the  most  significant  facts  in  the  study 
of  prehistoric  man  is  his  rapid  spiritual  as- 
cendancy. That  his  higher  development  was 
relatively  swift  and  intensely  progressive  is 
made  evident  by  an  examination  of  his  ana- 


EABLIEST   MANKIND  13 

tomical  remains,  chiefly  of  the  skull,  the  center 
of  his  evolutionary  advancement.  Indeed  a 
multitude  of  facts  indicate  that  his  spiritual 
growth  was  rapid. 

For  much  of  our  knowledge  along  these  lines, 
the  world  is  indebted  to  the  investigations  of 
such  scholars  as  Cartailhac,  Breuil,  Obermaier, 
Osborn,  Avebury,  Begouen,  Boule,  Broca,  Dar- 
win, Dechelette,  and  a  host  of  others.  Through 
their  eyes,  as  it  were,  we  are  enabled  to  visual- 
ize prehistoric  times.  These  men  have  laid  bare 
the  industries  of  the  Old  Stone  Age  in  their 
complete  sequence.  They  have  made  us  familiar 
with  the  climate ;  and  by  their  magic,  the  ancient 
flora  and  fauna  once  more  act  their  vital  parts 
on  the  world's  stage  for  our  instruction. 
Through  the  tireless  industry  of  savants  we 
may  make  our  pleasure-excursions  to  the  old 
camping-stations  of  Upper  Palaeolithic  Times, 
and  we  may  follow  for  our  amusement,  if  we 
wish,  the  prehistoric  invention  of  implements 
that  has  left  its  trail  in  such  fine  gradation. 

The  result  is  that  modern  man  gains  a  new 
conception  of  the  antiquity  of  his  race.  He  is 
better  able  to  understand  now  than  ever  before 
the  unfolding  of  the  human  spirit  as  it  occurred 
in  very  ancient  times.  Relationships  are  estab- 
lished across  thousands  of  changing  years,  form- 
ing a  medium  through  which  the  mind  of  to-day 


14         WOMAN   FROM   BONDAGE   TO   FREEDOM 

may  come  in  touch  with  the  powers  of  human 
observation,  of  discovery,  and  of  invention  dur- 
ing a  period  so  remote  that  in  contrast  with  it 
the  antiquity  of  Old  Babylon  is  of  yesterday. 

History  that  is  written  in  books  never  is 
wholly  truthful  nor  generally  reliable.  The  rea- 
son for  this  is  that  the  historian  is  human: 
the  work  suffers  from  the  frailties  and  imper- 
fections of  the  workman.  But  the  history  that 
is  recorded  by  the  works  of  change  in  soil  and 
rock  is  exact  truth  to  one  capable  of  reading 
Nature's  inscriptions. 

"When  Greek  conceptions  of  man's  origin  are 
compared  with  the  records  left  by  Nature,  the 
parallelism  is  remarkable.  Lucretius,  who  went 
to  Greek  sources  for  his  science  and  philosophy, 
foreshadowed  our  knowledge  of  prehistory  in 
his  poem,  De  Eerum  Natura.  The  poem  is  pic- 
torial. It  conjures  from  words  a  moving-pic- 
turelike  drama  acted  in  primitive  epochs. 
Through  it  we  catch  glimpses  of  our  kind  in 
preagricultural  periods.  We  see  how  ancient- 
man  lived  and  how  he  developed.  The  relative 
status  and  the  occupations  of  men  and  women 
are  clearly  perceived.  We  are  enabled  to  under- 
stand how  the  cordial  virtues  blossomed  at  the 
fireside,  and  how  man's  savagery  was  slowly 
chastened  by  his  growing  love  for  wife  and 
child. 


EARLIEST   MANKIND  15 

From  ^Eschylus  to  Horace,  the  Greek  con- 
ception of  human  natural  history  was  domi- 
nant. At  the  rise  of  the  new  religion  this 
wholesome  view  was  obscured  by  the  dogma  of 
special  creation — a  nightmare  that  swept  the 
Western  World  triumphantly  until  about  the 
sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries,  when 
studies  in  comparative  anatomy  began  to 
awaken  the  understanding,  giving  birth  to 
doubt;  and  doubt  started  the  mind  toward  dis- 
coveries that  have  all  but  wiped  away  the  many 
absurdities,  chief  of  which  was  the  anthropo- 
morphic divinity — a  god  who  not  only  shaped 
our  ends  according  to  childish  whim,  but  who 
pried  into  our  private  affairs  which  were  not 
even  of  local  importance,  and  who  prescribed 
our  prayers,  our  fasts,  and  our  feasts. 

With  the  rise  of  modern  anthropology,  the 
Mosaic  doctrine  of  special  creation  was  doomed. 
Buffon  thought  man  might  be  sensitive  at  the 
discovery  which  proved  him  to  be  * '  an  animal  in 
every  material  point".  The  pride  built  around 
our  Western  religious  conception  of  ourselves 
and  centered  in  our  fabled  origin  has  suffered, 
but  it  still  remains  as  a  sore  spot  under  clerical 
influence.  However,  the  doctrine  of  evolution 
engaged  broader  conceptions  wherein  there  is 
room  for  the  dignity  of  the  human  soul  to  ex- 
pand and  to  amuse  itself  by  indulging  a  multi- 


16         WOMAN   PEOM   BONDAGE   TO   FREEDOM 

tnde  of  harmless  vanities  regardless  of  La- 
marck's shocking  belief  that  the  temple  of 
the  spirit  is  nothing  more  than  the  modified 
body  of  an  anthropoid  ape. 


WOMAN  IN  PREHISTORY 

ESTINY  made  motherlfood  the  chief 
occupation  of  prehistoric  women. 
Fatherhood  was  a  mere  incident,  a 
diversion  from  the  chase,  a  pleasant 
avocation.  Motherhood  became  a  vocation 
when  humanity  emerged  from  prehuman  beings. 
As  we  look  backward  along  time 's  ever-narrow- 
ing vista  the  milestones  crowd  together  until  it 
seems  that  motherhood  leapt  from  the  function 
of  fortuitous  reproduction  among  animals  to 
an  imperative  calling  thrilled  with  spiritual 
aspiration. 

Motherhood  was  a  multiple  calling  in  early 
primitive  epochs.  It  made  other  occupations 
necessary.  It  was  enlivened  with  subtle  phan- 
toms; and  it  carried  "the  sad  burden  of  some 
merry  song".  It  moulded  the  form  of  woman, 
and  it  has  shaped  the  soul  of  man.  If  God 
ever  spoke  to  mortals,  it  was  through  mother- 
hood, not  through  a  book.  Ceaselessly  He 
knocked  at  the  door  of  human  consciousness,  as 
it  were,  bidding  it  to  open  and  to  admit  the  ten- 
derer virtues.  Perhaps  mercy  first  entered 
the  heart  of  man  through  this  door.  Sympathy 

17 


18          WOMAN    FROM    BONDAGE    TO    FREEDOM 

is  a  feminine  trait.  The  primordial  savage 
spared  the  life  of  an  orphaned  babe  because 
his  woman  had  brought  forth  a  similar  stranger 
equally  helpless.  Primitive  woman  suckled  the 
waif  because  her  own  babe  had  lain  at  her 
breasts.  She  first  sheltered  a  young  being, 
more  ape  thati  human,  because  she  thought  of 
her  own  offspring.  She  fed  a  strange  child  be- 
cause the  hunger-cries  of  her  own  were  ringing 
in  her  memory.  Some  of  her  earliest  virtues 
were  born  of  the  make-believe.  She  held  an 
alien  child  in  her  arms  and  made  believe  it 
was  her  own.  She  mourned  the  loss  of  her  first- 
born and  lo !  her  grief  turned  into  imagination. 

Early  in  the  dawn  of  humanity,  motherhood 
was  a  well-established  occupation.  As  hu- 
manity waxed,  this  occupation  differentiated  to 
specialize  on  what  we  now  call  the  virtues.  It 
learned  to  grow  the  flowers  that  long  for  moths 
and  moonlight,  as  well  as  those  that  love  the 
bees  and  the  hot  sun.  Man  was  engrossed  in 
the  seeking  of  food  for  himself.  He  became 
the  hunter.  Woman  was  occupied  in  the  seek- 
ing of  food  for  herself  and  her  young.  Thus 
motherhood  was  the  seed  of  altruism  sown  in 
the  fairy  dust  of  earth  when  the  world  was 
young. 

When  the  primitive  mother  had  to  lay  up 
from  the  chase — when  she  was  compelled  to 
watch  and  guard  her  babes — to  slacken  her 


WOMAN   IN   PREHISTORY  19 

arduous  efforts  for  a  period — she  usually  found 
herself  short  of  meat.  At  such  times,  when  the 
season  was  favorable,  she  ate  roots  and  herbs 
and  the  seeds  of  wild  grasses.  Remembering 
her  hardships,  her  hunger  and  want,  she  in- 
vented agriculture.  She  probably  invented  fire. 
She  was  the  first  to  cook.  She  made  the  first 
home,  and  she  will  preside  over  the  last.  Love 
came  to  her  heart  ages  before  it  entered  man's. 
She  invented  art ;  and  she  was  the  first  to  dream 
of  immortality. 

As  sexual  relations  broadened  into  other 
forms  of  co-operation  between  men  and  women, 
labor  slowly  differentiated.  The  division  of 
labor  made  woman  a  drudge.  Her  sex  became 
domestical.  She  was  driven  to  sustained 
effort.  Man,  always  the  hunter,  naturally  be- 
came the  warrior.  Nature  fitted  him  for 
bursts  of  speed.  Vitally,  he  was  a  spendthrift, 
and  a  spendthrift  he  has  remained.  In  vitality, 
woman  was  the  banker.  Very  early  in  her 
career  she  became  inured  to  routine.  Routine 
is  a  form  of  bondage. 

Gradually  men  began  to  co-operate  for  pur- 
poses of  war  and  the  chase.  They  became 
gregarious.  Woman  remained  solitary.  She 
developed  resources,  and  the  faculty  of  medita- 
tion that  was  the  mother  of  her  intuition.  Her 
mental  trajectory  diverged  from  man's.  She 
was  the  first  thinker.  Her  solitary  periods 


20         WOMAN   FROM   BONDAGE   TO   FKEEDOM 

fostered  her  self-reliance,  her  ingenuity.  She 
was  first  to  seek  shelter  and  to  wear  clothes. 
She  excelled  in  the  arts  of  peace  as  man  ex- 
celled in  the  arts  of  war.  She  invented  the 
needle.  She  discovered  the  uses  of  grease. 
She  was  the  first  to  dig  a  hole,  to  plant  a  seed 
— to  erect  the  pole-house,  around  which  she 
wove  twigs,  or  covered  the  poles  with  bark  and 
leaves.  She  was  first  to  dress  hides.  She  in- 
vented the  pelt-raiser,  the  skin-scraper.  As 
the  Ice  Age  approached,  she  made  rude  gar- 
ments of  vegetal  fiber  and  of  skins,  sewing 
them  with  sinewy  thread  of  her  own  produc- 
tion. She  fashioned  the  first  shoes.  She  de- 
vised the  water-vessel,  the  basket,  the  first 
crude  pottery,  the  first  agricultural  implement 
which  probably  was  a  stick,  sharpened  and 
point-hardened  by  flame.  She  was  the  first 
miller — first  to  pound  seeds  with  stones  and  to 
grind  them  with  mullers.  She  originated  the 
granary.  She  invented  drag-poles  ages  before 
man  invented  the  wheel.  She  invented  civiliza- 
tion. 

Woman  made  the  cat  and  the  dog  domesti- 
cal.  She  domesticated  the  plants.  Man 
tamed  dogs,  cattle,  reindeer,  sheep,  and  horses ; 
and  woman  domesticated  them.  Man  was  the 
shepherd;  woman  was  the  farmer.  The  Ne- 
anderthal hunters  drove  the  cave-bear  and  the 
hyena  from  the  caverns,  converting  the  en- 


WOMAN   IN  PKEHISTOKY  21 

trances  into  homes  and  camps.  They  hunted 
the  mammoth,  the  wild-horse,  the  rhinoceros, 
the  giant  deer,  the  reindeer,  the  bison,  and  wild 
cattle.  The  women  prepared  the  meals,  or 
rather  the  irregular  gluts;  they  dressed  the 
pelts — made  them  into  covers  and  clothes. 
Women  laid  the  hearthstones  at  the  entrances 
of  the  caves,  so  they  could  work  in  the  open 
daylight.  At  night  and  during  rainy  or  in- 
clement weather,  they  retired  just  within, 
making  their  beds  well  back  from  the  mouth  of 
the  grotto. 

Man  raided  the  lair  of  the  wolf — trained  the 
cubs  to  aid  him  in  the  chase ;  but  it  was  woman 
who  converted  the  wolf  into  a  warder  of  the 
fireside  and  the  friend  of  mankind.  She  dis- 
membered the  game  where  men  and  dogs 
brought  it  down.  She  split  the  marrow-bones; 
she  clove  the  skull  for  its  brains ;  and  she  trans- 
muted tooth,  tusk,  and  claw  into  ornaments  and 
talismans.  She  invented  the  fat-burning  lamp 
to  succeed  the  torch;  she  tended  the  fires;  she 
guarded  the  springs;  she  protected  her  young 
from  marauders  at  the  cave-entrance;  she  de- 
vised the  first  crude  implements  of  the  hearth- 
side;  she  gathered  the  natural  tar  for  making 
her  baskets  water-tight.  In  a  word,  she  was 
man's  help  that  was  meet  for  him. 

Man  was  familiar  with  the  virgin  forests, 
with  their  wild  denizens.  Woman  knew  the 


22         WOMAN   FROM   BONDAGE   TO   FREEDOM 

plants.  The  great  Ice  Age  was  approaching. 
Forests,  plants,  and  animals  of  central  France 
and  northern  Italy  were  beginning  to  feel  the 
coming  change.  The  forests  were  not  unlike 
those  of  our  central  states.  There  were  sassa- 
fras trees,  the  roots  of  which  woman  already 
had  learned  to  use.  There  were  locusts,  su- 
machs, the  bald  cypress,  and  the  tulip.  In 
northern  Italy  were  forests  of  sweet  and  sour 
gum,  of  the  bay,  and  of  other  varieties  such 
as  we  have  to-day  in  the  Carolinas.  Along 
the  Mediterranean  were  bamboos,  palms,  and 
the  sequoia.  All  over  central  France  were  thriv- 
ing forests  of  oak,  poplar,  willow,  beech,  and 
larch.  These  for  the  most  part  survived  the 
Glacial  rigors  to  reforest  Europe  in  Post-Gla- 
cial times;  but  many  types,  some  of  which  we 
now  have  in  America,  became  extinct  in  Europe. 
The  forests  abounded  with  several  kinds  of 
monkeys.  There  were  Asiatic  mammals  such 
as  the  rhinoceros,  the  mastodon,  the  antelope, 
the  gazelle.  Hyenas  lurked  in  the  shadows ;  the 
African  hippopotamus  wallowed  in  the  river- 
bottoms;  there  were  saber-tooth  tigers,  and 
several  species  of  deer.  There  were  African- 
Asiatic  mammals  such  as  elephants,  wild  boars, 
lynxes,  foxes,  and  wild-cats.  In  the  rivers  were 
otter  and  beaver;  on  the  hills  were  the  hares. 
As  some  of  these  animals  disappeared  before 


WOMAN   IN   PREHISTORY  23 

the  lowering  temperature,  others,  such  as  the 
northern  musk-ox,  took  their  places. 

In  the  region  of  England,  where  the  climate 
was  warmer  than  at  present,  there  were  for- 
ests of  maple,  elm,  birch,  alder,  oak,  pine,  and 
spruce.  All  these  trees  flourished  during  the 
first  Interglacial  Period.  Only  the  hardier 
flora  and  fauna  survived  later  hardships.  All 
over  Europe  the  forests  and  the  meadows  were 
teeming  with  wild-life.  In  truth,  as  John  Hey- 
wood  says, 

Fieldes  had  eies  and  woods  had  eares. 

Such,  in  brief,  was  the  environment  of  our  early 
ancestors. 

The  effects  of  climatic  phenomena  on  human 
beings  during  Glacial  and  Interglacial  Times 
have  engaged  the  attention  of  many  thoughtful 
minds.  The  multiple  Glacial  Stages  were  ac- 
companied by  multiple  climatic  changes,  the 
successive  periods  of  which  conditioned  the 
flora  and  fauna  of  Europe  throughout  the  long 
age.  Beds  of  fossil  plants  and  bones  of  mam- 
mals, glacial  moraines  and  "drifts",  and  suc- 
ceeding "river-terraces", — all  these  tell  the 
story.  And  because  the  wisest  man  that  ever 
lived  is  not  always  right,  there  is  divergence  of 
opinion  among  savants  as  to  the  number  of 
Glacial  and  Interglacial  Periods.  The  prevail- 
ing opinion  is  there  were  eight;  but  the  exact 


24         WOMAN   FROM   BONDAGE   TO   FREEDOM 

number  is  not  important  to  our  present  pur- 
poses. 

These  divisions  taken  together  form  the  most 
interesting  age  of  the  ancient  world.  For  it 
was  during  this  great  Ice  Age  that  the  cultural 
relics  and  the  skeletal  remains  of  primitive  man 
were  deposited.  On  these  deposits  are  based 
vital  parts  of  our  study.  The  duration  of  this 
epoch  therefore  is  important.  Authorities 
differ  from  800,000  to  100,000  years;  but  the 
conservative  estimate  of  Penck  is  now  generally 
accepted.  This  gives  us  an  approximate  period 
of  525,000  years  ' '  since  the  first  great  ice-fields 
developed  in  Scandinavia,  in  the  Alps,  and  in 
North  America  west  of  Hudson  Bay". 

Since  the  grand  divisions  of  time  are  marked 
by  certain  large  geologic  agencies  forever  at 
work,  the  comparative  ages  of  the  various  camp- 
sites of  prehistoric  folk  are  determined,  first, 
by  their  geologic  succession;  second,  by  the  im- 
bedded remains  of  mammals  and  plants;  and, 
third,  by  implements  and  other  relics  of  cultural 
types  of  industry. 

The  Old-Stone-Age  man  was  induced  to  dwell 
where  game  was  abundant  and  where  the  raw 
material  for  his  meager  industries  was  acces- 
sible. Something  ever  brought  him  back  to 
his  old  camping-grounds.  Perhaps  it  was 
' '  the  musty  reek  that  lingers  about  dead  leaves 
and  last  year's  ferns",  in  the  words  of  Rupert 


WOMAN   IN  PREHISTORY  25 

Brooke.  It  was  at  these  sites  that  prehistoric 
children  first  noticed  that  wet  pebbles  were 
rich  for  an  hour;  and  there  it  was  that  lovers 
first  noted  the  gleaming  raindrops  in  the  cups 
of  flowers.  At  any  rate,  where  woman  laid  the 
hearthstones  is  written  much  of  the  strange 
tale  of  primordial  human  life.  But  other  rec- 
ords also  were  left.  Xow  and  then  in  the  "river- 
drift"  are  found  vestiges  of  man's  skeletal  re- 
mains, and  oftener  the  relics  of  his  industry. 
In  time  and  the  fulness  thereof,  as  love  evolved 
the  funeral  rite  and  appointed  the  burial  place, 
his  relics  tended  to  assemble.  The  implements 
of  his  make,  less  perishable  than  his  bones,  were 
widely  scattered;  some  are  found  in  "river- 
drift"  and  "river-terrace";  others  on  the 
plateaus  and  uplands  of  the  "loess"  stations. 
Chronology  therefore  must  be  determined  by 
geologist,  archaeologist,  anatomist,  anthropolo- 
gist, and  the  rest, — all  working  together  co- 
operatively. Then  the  inspired  savants,  with 
the  enthusiasm  of  genius,  weave  the  whole  into 
a  fabric  that  constitutes  the  fascinating  story 
of  prehistoric  life  and  times. 

The  caves,  scoured  out  in  early  glacial  times 
by  subterranean  streams  heavy  with  grit  and 
gravel,  became  relatively  dry  in  later  epochs. 
Yet  their  depths  were  not  generally  inhabited, 
owing  to  poor  ventilation,  as  indicated  by  the 
old  hearths  that  almost  always  are  near  the 


26         WOMAN   FROM   BONDAGE   TO   FREEDOM 

entrance,  just  inside  or  just  without.  Instead 
of  cave-life,  it  was  grotto-life.  The  primitive 
hunter-tribes  were  ever  in  love  with  the  open 
regions  where  they  followed  a  roving  life  as 
free  as  the  winds.  They  made  their  camps 
however  in  sheltered  places  during  the  inclem- 
ent seasons.  The  deep  cave-recesses  were  re- 
served probably  as  prisons  for  captured 
women,  and  later  perhaps  as  headquarters  for 
artists,  priests,  and  magicians. 

The  geologic  technic  in  cave-construction 
was  efficacious  in  smoothing  the  walls  and  in 
carpeting  the  floors  with  fine  loam.  The  Mag- 
dalenian  artists  probably  made  their  first  draw- 
ings in  this  cave-loam;  and  now  and  then,  as 
for  example  in  the  Tuc  d  'Audoubert,  they  made 
use  of  this  material  as  modelers'  clay.  The 
smooth,  often  polished,  walls  were  used  in  an 
early  day  as  drawing-boards,  and  finally  to  re- 
ceive the  paintings  of  the  Upper  Palaeolithic 
artists. 

So  much  depends  from  point  of  view  that  I 
often  wonder  what  should  be  regarded  as  a 
standard  in  looking  at  anything.  In  the  con- 
templation of  prehistory,  the  time-scale  is  the 
epoch  marked  by  geologic  changes  in  the  skin  of 
the  world,  by  climatic  conditions  which  bathe  it, 
and  by  evolutionary  stages  in  the  progress  of 
life :  a  progress  dominated  by  some  mysterious 
force  surrounding  the  habitable  globe — an  epi- 


WOMAN   IN   PREHISTOEY  27 

phenomenon  governed  by  a  strange  mandate 
that  forces  life  to  bruise  and  to  break  living 
beings  in  order  to  continue. 

In  dealing  with  prehistory,  one  must  treat  a 
continent  as  he  might  treat  his  garden;  that  is 
to  say,  he  must  note  all  the  changes  through 
the  round  year.  The  difference  is  this:  the 
prehistoric  year  is  multiplied  in  the  concep- 
tion of  the  prehistorian  by  525,000.  His  spring 
begins  with  the  Eocene  Epoch,  when  mammalian 
life  swarmed  over  the  continent  of  Western 
Europe — life  that  was  "  indigenous  to  every 
continent  on  the  globe  except  South  America 
and  Australia,  and  adapted  to  every  climatic 
life-zone,  from  the  warm  and  dry  plains  of 
southern  Asia  and  northern  Africa  to  the  tem- 
perate forests  and  meadows  of  Eurasia".  Some 
came  "from  the  heights  of  the  Alps,  Himalayas, 
Pyrennees,  and  Altai  mountains ' ' ;  others  from 
"the  high,  arid,  dry  steppes  of  central  Asia, 
with  their  alternating  heat  of  summer  and  cold 
of  winter";  others  came  down  "from  the 
tundras  or  barren  grounds  of  Scandinavia, 
northern  Europe,  and  Siberia";  and  still  others 
from  "the  mild  forests  and  plains  of  southern 
Europe".1 

Thus  the  prehistorian  visualizes  this  swarm- 
ing life;  and  he  marks  its  variations  through 
succeeding  epochal  seasons.  He  notes  that  the 

1Men  of  the  Old  Stone  Ago  (Osborn). 


28         WOMAN    FEOM   BONDAGE    TO    FREEDOM 

successive  groups  of  our  Palaeolithic  kind  fed 
upon  these  mammals,  used  their  bones  for  im- 
plements and  their  skins  for  clothing ;  and  that 
in  the  course  of  time  these  utilitarian  objects 
became  artistic  subjects  of  aesthetic  taste 
capable  of  high  development. 

This  aesthetic  development  based  on  the  most 
utilitarian  pursuits  of  early  man  is  a  sign,  lit- 
tle in  itself,  pointing  to  large  things.  It  makes 
possible  those  fine  deductions  that  carry  with 
them  in  some  way  an  atmosphere  of  poetic  fancy 
to  soften  the  sharp  angles  of  realism  and  to 
render  alluring  a  realm  which  is  so  weirdly 
remote. 

Having  now  the  human  being  with  his  nature 
and  powers  well  established  and  defined,  we 
see  him  environed  by  climate  and  flora  and 
fauna  in  no  respect  remarkably  strange  to  his 
descendants  to-day.  Knowing  that  he  was  in 
the  earliest  stages  of  education,  we  are  able 
to  visualize  the  nature  of  his  struggles  for  ex- 
istence, and  to  see  just  what  powers  of  his 
mind  and  body  were  exercised  to  their  fullest 
extent  and  keenest  intensity.  With  this  as  a 
basis,  wTe  may  follow  his  aesthetic  development 
through  the  various  stages  of  his  art,  and  thus 
may  we  catch  glimpses  of  his  soul  in  its  un- 
folding. 

Xothing  else  so  clearly  reveals  the  soul  of  a 
people  as  does  their  art.  Science  and  mechanics 


WOMAN    IX   PREHISTORY  29 

are  purely  intellectual.  Commerce  is  the  flux 
of  acquisitiveness  everywhere  extended.  Eco- 
nomics is  a  philosophy  founded  on  the  preda- 
tory instincts  of  man.  Statecraft  is  a  working- 
theory  to  make  the  philosophy  seem  plausible. 
Politics  is  the  brutal  application  of  that  theory. 
But  the  aesthetic  impulse  bursts  from  the  emo- 
tional nature  of  man.  This  impulse  is  one  of 
the  earlier  signs  of  man's  superanimal  destiny. 
Artistic  vision  is  an  innate  faculty  of  mind  and 
spirit;  and  the  inborn  urge  to  create  and  to 
perpetuate  enjoyment  precedes-  the  powers  of 
representation.  Art  is  destined  to  reveal  a 
sense  of  proportion  in  which  beauty  dwells ;  to 
welcome  the  advent  of  morals,  because  morals 
is  the  flowering  of  spiritual  beauty;  and  at  the 
same  time  it  is  destined  to  discover  the  charm 
of  form  and  color. 

Art  in  Europe  may  be  traced  from  early 
Aurignacian  times,  and  it  may  be  continuously 
followed  until  the  close  of  the  Magdalenian 
period.  The  dominant  racial  group  of  that 
epoch  is  believed  to  have  been  the  Cro-Magnon. 
Dr.  Osborn  regards  this  people  as  the  "Palae- 
olithic Greeks ' '.  From  the  beginning,  their  art 
shows  on  the  whole  an  unbroken  evolution. 

Lartet  was  the  first  to  discover  this  art;  and 
the  investigations  he  started  were  continued  by 
Piette,  Capitan,  Sautuola,  Cartailhac,  Breuil, 
and  others.  It  ranges  from  I'art  mobilier,  con- 


30          WOMAN   FROM   BONDAGE   TO   FREEDOM 

sisting  of  the  embellishment  of  ornaments  and 
implements  of  stone,  bone,  and  ivory,  to  I'art 
parietal  which  covers  "drawings,  engravings, 
paintings,  and  bas-reliefs  on  the  walls  of  cav- 
erns and  grottos".1  Breuil  proved  this  art  to 
be  homogeneous  and  progressive  in  its  devel- 
opment. According  to  Osborn,  it  forms  a  key  to 
the  psychology  of  the  racial  group  not  only,  but 
it  becomes  another  means  '  *  of  establishing  pre- 
historic chronology". 

Considered  as  a  means  of  determining  the 
comparative  chronology  of  the  times,  a  study  of 
this  art  is  invaluable  as  giving  the  rough  date 
of  execution  "by  the  archaeological  layers  of 
succeeding  periods".  The  stalactite  formations 
that  have  required  thousands  of  years  in  which 
to  close  the  entrances  of  galleries  in  caves,  are 
sufficient  proof  of  the  antiquity  of  the  art  found 
in  those  galleries.  There  are  also  frescoed  ceil- 
ings that  have  been  buried  since  "long  before 
Neolithic  times  ...  by  the  closing  up  of  the 
entrance"  of  the  cave.  Again,  there  is  the 
similarity  of  characteristics  shown  "in  the  en- 
gravings on  bone,  found  in  the  old  hearths,  as- 
sociated with  flints,  to  [those  of]  the  mural 
decorations  which  are  found  upon  the  walls". 
There  are  still  other  means  of  determining  the 
chronology  as,  for  instance,  the  superposition 
of  design,  the  type  of  the  animal  depicted,  etc. 

1  Osborn. 


WOMAN"   IN   PREHISTORY  31 

A  careful  examination  of  the  art  shows  that 
it  proceeded  gradually  from  childlike  powers 
of  observation  to  those  as  adequate  as  any 
possessed  by  ourselves.  The  artistic  impulse 
of  this  people  found  outlet  through  many  dif- 
ferent fields  of  achievement.  There  were  en- 
gravings on  bone,  stone,  and  ivory;  the  fash- 
ioning and  the  carving  of  the  same  materials 
range  from  the  crudest  attempts  at  sculpture  to 
fine  effects  in  bas-relief,  mural  drawing,  geo- 
metric decoration,  and  painting. 

Aurignacian  figurines  carved  from  soapstone 
throw  sidelights  on  the  life  of  the  times.  The 
male  figures  indicate  that  the  men  followed 
active,  athletic  pursuits;  while  the  female  fig- 
ures show  a  corpulency  resulting  from  a 
sedentary  life  and  a  diet  of  fat  and  marrow. 

The  delineation  of  animal  forms  naturally 
began  at  a  very  early  date,  before  attempts 
were  made  to  depict  the  human  form.  The  first 
indications  of  painting  lead  to  ancient  Aurig- 
nacian times.  The  efforts  in  this  direction  were 
confined  to  crude  outlines;  later  the  outline 
drawings  were  filled  in  with  color.  All  through 
these  designs  and  paintings  may  be  found  evi- 
dent attempts  at  close  observation  and  realism 
of  effect  produced  by  relatively  few  lines,  to- 
gether with  vital  suggestions  of  the  spirit  of 
action.  As  draughtsmanship  developed,  char- 
acteristic features  were  seized  upon  and  em- 


32         WOMAN   FROM   BONDAGE  TO   FREEDOM 

phasized,  showing  not  only  the  power  of  ac- 
curate observation  but  an  artistic  sense  of  a 
high  order  in  the  designer.  Slowly  but  surely 
the  human  motif  became  more  important  to  the 
mind  of  the  artist  than  that  of  the  brute  figure. 

A  fact  bearing  on  the  speech-area  of  the  brain 
already  referred  to,  indicating  that  its  location 
at  that  time  had  been  established  in  the  left 
hemisphere,  is  found  in  the  many  right-handed 
tools  recently  discovered,  such  as  crude  flint 
saws,  picks,  chopping  instruments,  stone  planes, 
burins,  and  so  forth. 

During  the  long  course  of  artistic  unfolding, 
the  effect  of  climate,  which  produced  changed 
habits  of  life,  bears  upon  the  art-product  of 
these  prehistoric  groups.  Apparently,  during 
the  Solutrean  times  when  the  people  were  ac- 
customed to  live  more  in  the  open,  the  art-im- 
pulse slackened,  to  become  taut  again  under 
the  more  rigorous  climate  of  Magdalenian  times 
as  the  people  were  driven  back  to  cave-  or 
grotto-life. 

The  Cro-Magnon  group  probably  produced 
the  art  of  both  Aurignacian  and  Magdalenian 
times.  The  Solutrean  culture  reached  Europe 
from  the  East ;  its  origin  however  is  as  obscure 
as  that  of  the  Cro-Magnon.  There  is  some  evi- 
dence of  Solutrean  advance  over  Aurignacian 
art  in  decorative  and  geometric  effects.  But 
Magdalenian  art  interests  us  most  because  it 


WOMAN  IN  PKBHISTOBY  33 

reveals  "the  culmination  of  Palaeolithic  civil- 
ization"; because  "it  marka  the  highest  de- 
velopment of  the  Cro-Magnon  race  preceding 
their  sudden  decline  and  disappearance  as  the 
dominant  race  of  western  Europe".  Further- 
more, according  to  Osborn,  "The  men  of  this 
time  are  commonly  known  as  the  Magdalenians, 
taking  their  name  from  the  type  station  of 
La  Madeleine,  as  the  Greeks  in  their  highest 
stage  took  their  name  from  Athens  and  were 
known  as  Athenians." 

It  seems  to  be  well  established  that  the  early 
Aurignacian  art  movement  culminated  during 
Magdalenian  times  when  it  reached  its  apogee 
in  sculpture,  engraving,  and  painting.  Its 
uniform  character  implies  that  it  was  done  by 
the  Cro-Magnon  group. 

The  Magdalenian  artists,  being  accomplished 
realists,  must  have  come  into  close  contact  with 
their  subjects  since  they  rendered  them  so  well 
in  action  and  form.  This  is  notable  in  their 
treatment  of  bison,  horse,  mammoth,  reindeer, 
rhinoceros,  lion,  and  bear.  The  decoration  of 
living-utensils  also  shows  a  high  state  of  artistic 
culture.  Whatever  the  cause  of  the  incom- 
plete arrest  of  art  during  Solutrean  times,  its 
revival  during  the  Magdalenian  is  obvious  in 
many  forms,  including  that  of  the  human  figure. 

The  two  leading  interests  of  those  times  seem 
to  have  been  the  chase  and  the  cultivation  of 


34         WOMAN   FBOM   BONDAGE  TO   FKEEDOM 

art.  Mysterious  caverns  were  converted  into 
picture  galleries.  The  aesthetic  impulse  was 
intensely  active.  Certain  beautifully  carved 
implements  called  "batons  de  commandement " 
suggest  tribal  organization  of  an  advanced 
stage.  Then  as  now,  there  was  diversity  of 
temperament  and  of  talent.  This  diversity  al- 
ways produces  social  differentiation.  There 
were  hunters,  priests,  chiefs,  artists,  manufac- 
turers, dressers  of  hides,  and  primitive  tillers 
of  the  soil. 

As  the  intellect  developed,  the  sense  of  won- 
der grew.  The  phenomena  of  nature  attracted 
first  the  emotions  and  later  the  thought  of  man. 
This  partly  accounts  for  the  dim  birth  of  re- 
ligion; for  religion  is,  among  other  things,  an 
emotive  outlet  for  wonder  and  awe.  From 
the  sense  of  wonder  the  gods  were  born,  just  as 
ghosts  issued  from  dreams,  just  as  angels 
sprang  from  hope  and  evil  demons  from  fear. 
The  sense  of  grandeur  aroused  ideas  of  the 
supernatural;  and  the  sense  of  curiosity  led 
early  man  to  explore  the  depths  of  caves  and 
the  unknown  regions  of  forest  and  sea.  Music 
and  poetry,  formerly  one  but  now  widely  di- 
vergent, came  from  love;  and  the  idea  of  a 
spirit  possibly  had  its  origin  in  the  shadow. 
The  craving  for  an  explanation  of  natural  oc- 
currences let  loose  all  manner  of  vague  notions 
.and  a  host  of  superstitions,  many  of  which  re- 


WOMAN   IN   PREHISTORY  35 

main  with  us.  For  we  still  are  living  in  the 
morning  of  humanity.  The  noontide  of  our 
race  is  ages  and  ages  away.  The  burial  rite 
probably  originated  in  the  hope  of  another  life. 

The  artists  of  those  far-off  times  delineated 
upward  of  thirty  varieties  of  mammals.  We 
know  that  they  had  before  their  eyes  a  vast  ar- 
ray of  animal  life,  many  forms  of  which  they 
depicted  with  vigor  and  skill.  There  were  the 
tundra  animals:  mammoth,  woolly  rhinoceros, 
reindeer,  musk-ox!  from  the  steppes  were 
horses,  antelope,  asses;  Asiatic  life  gave  to 
them  the  lion  and  the  desert  horse ;  in  the  Alps 
were  ibex  and  chamois,  in  the  meadows,  bison 
and  wild  cattle;  roaming  the  forests  were  red 
deer,  stags,  forest-horses,  cave-bears,  wolves, 
wild-boars,  and  the  moose.  It  is  highly  sug- 
gestive that  the  artists  were  attracted  more  by 
animal  subjects  that  possessed  fine  lines  and 
pleasing  proportion  than  by  the  others, — a 
favorite  being  the  majestic  bison,  or  the  grace- 
ful horse. 

Eeturning  to  climatic  influences :  It  is  quite 
certain  that  as  the  climatic  conditions  became 
harder  the  artistic  traits  of  the  Cro-Magnons 
were  stimulated  and,  as  naturally  would  be 
expected,  both  physical  and  mental  development 
became  more  rapid.  The  imagination  seems 
to  flower  in  physical  hardship,  and  its  roots 
always  are  found  in  the  home,  whether  the  home 


36        (WOMAN"   FROM   BONDAGE  TO   FREEDOM 

be  a  natural  cave  below  ground  or  one  arti- 
ficially constructed  above;  and  better  than  all 
else,  the  home  must  contain  a  hearth  presided 
over  by  a  woman. 

The  people  of  Magdalenian  times  certainly 
had  stone  vessels  for  holding  water,  stone  mor- 
tars and  pestles  for  grinding  mineral  colors. 
They  engraved  ivory  tusks  and  made  wonder- 
ful harpoons,  flint  augers,  burins,  polishers, 
bone  needles,  flint  saws,  and  stone  lamps.  Ac- 
cording to  Barthelot,  animal  fata  were  burned 
in  the  lamps. 

The  methods  of  some  of  the  later  Magda- 
lenian artists  were  similar  to  those  of  to-day; 
that  is  to  say,  first  a  sketch  or  design  was 
made,  to  be  followed  with  the  painting.  Pri- 
mordial realism  slowly  passed  into  a  form  of 
impressionism  which  was  executed  with  the 
least  number  of  lines.  The  spirit  of  Magda- 
lenian art  was  as  " modern"  as  that  of  Bar- 
bizon. 

The  foregoing  leads  to  a  very  important  fea- 
ture of  prehistory:  that  is  the  relation  of 
woman  to  the  earliest  known  art.  This  fea- 
ture never  has  been  recognized  fully  by  any 
authority  on  these  matters.  It  has  been  as- 
sumed, always  tacitly  or  otherwise,  that  the 
prehistoric  artists  were  men.  This  assumption 
is  natural  enough  to  one  who  has  in  mind  the 
art-development  of  the  last  two  or  three  thou- 


WOMAN   IN   PBEHISTOEY  37 

sand  years.  But  during  this  relatively  modern 
period,  conditions  under  which  art  developed 
are  so  entirely  different  from  those  of  remote 
prehistory  that  analogy  between  them  breaks 
down. 

It  seems  altogether  probable  that  woman  was 
the  first  artist.  The  conditions  of  her  life  were 
favorable  to  the  development  of  an  Artistic 
temperament,  to  use  a  trite  expression,  ages 
before  man  had  time  to  think  of  much  else 
than  the  chase  and  war.  As  we  have  seen,  the 
life  of  woman  was  more  solitary  than  that  of 
man.  We  know  that  the  child  (quickly  repro- 
ducing the  childhood  of  its  race)  is  given  to 
" making  pictures".  The  solitary  child,  par- 
ticularly, finds  its  chief  amusement  in  the  draw- 
ing of  crude  outlines.  It  uses  colored  materials 
when  it  can ;  but  when  it  can  not  do  better,  the 
child  resorts  to  scratches,  making  use  of  any 
material  within  reach. 

Primitive  woman,  probably  was  a  keener  ob- 
server than  primitive  man.  Her  life,  as  his, 
depended  on  powers  of  observation;  but  what 
was  more  important  to  her  than  life  was  the 
life  of  her  child.  Thus  a  double  stress  was 
imposed  on  her  powers  of  observation.  Be- 
sides, she  had  greater  opportunity  than  man, 
during  her  enforced  periods  of  solitude,  to 
turn  toward  artistic  employment.  She  had 
learned  to  make  baskets  and  to  daub  them  with 


38          WOMAN   FROM   BONDAGE   TO    FREEDOM 

natural  tar.  Already  she  was  producing  crude 
handicraft  objects.  She  knew  how  to  scratch 
in  the  earth  and  other  soft  substances  to  con- 
vey information  to  a  chance  passer-by.  It  was 
now  only  a  step  to  the  making  of  drawings  on 
bark,  stone,  and  bone.  From  her  earliest  util- 
itarian signs  and  marks  to  playful  caricature 
was  another  step.  From  this  to  the  aesthetic 
drawings  on  the  walls  of  caves,  on  loose  stones, 
on  tusks  and  bark,  was  only  another  step ;  and 
that  step  I  think  she  made. 

Figures  of  women  are  relatively  scarce  in 
the  examples  we  have  of  the  art  of  this  period. 
This  is  exactly  what  would  be  expected  if  the 
artists  were  women.  The  mysterious  lure  of 
sex  inspired  the  early  delineators  with  dreams 
of  their  sexual  complements.  These  dreams 
seek  concrete  expression.  Naturally,  the  women 
artists  would  be  more  concerned  with  the  male 
figure;  and  for  that  reason,  where  the  human 
form  is  outlined,  it  usually  is  the  lithe,  athletic 
form  of  man.  Where  we  find  the  figures  of 
women  represented,  they  are  fat  and  they  have 
the  maternity  features  grossly  exaggerated. 
Both  in  outline  and  in  modeling,  the  figures 
clearly  indicate  that  woman  was  of  sedentary 
occupation.  The  point  is  that  the  sedentary 
life  favored  the  artistic  pursuit  then  as  it  does 
now.  At  any  rate,  those  who  had  the  leisure 
were  more  likely  to  have  been  artists  than  those 


WOMAN   IN   PREHISTORY  39 

who  were  engaged  more  or  less  continuously  in 
the  strenuous  pursuit  of  game  or  the  arduous 
pursuit  of  warfare. 

When  these  early  folk  began  to  occupy  the 
caverns,  the  deeper  recesses  probably  were  at 
first  used  as  prisons  for  women  captives.  Con- 
fined in  these  retreats,  they  were  easily  guarded. 
During  long  periods  of  idleness,  it  is  natural 
that  they  should  turn  to  the  adornment  of  the 
cavern  walls  and  to  other  artistic  occupations. 

"When  men  first  crept  from  out  earth's  womb,  like 

worms, 
Dumb    speechless    creatures,    scarce    with    human 

forms, 

With  nails  or  doubled  fists  they  used  to  fight 
For  acorns  or  for  sleeping-holes  at  night ; 
Clubs  followed  next ;  at  last  to  arms  they  came ' ' ; 
And  meanwhile  longing  taught  them  how  to  frame 
An  intuition  vague  with  boundary-lines; 
And  then  the  love  of  mimicry  entwines 
With  loftier  imagery,  until  the  heart 
Of  prehistoric  man  sowed  seeds  of  art 
That  found  congenial  soil  in  bark  and  bone, 
Took  root  in  sunless  galleries  of  stone; — 
Thenceforth  a  vine  crept  round  the  smiling  earth 
To  bear  the  blossoms  of  benignant  worth.1 

1  The  Philosophy  of  Painting  (Bell). 


WOMAN  IN  THE  BORDERLAND  OF 
HISTORY 

HERE  is  no  evidence  that  primitive 
woman  was  inferior  to  primitive 
man.  The  differences  in  sex  that 
effected  divergence  of  mental  tra- 
jectory, emotive  cleavage,  and  a  division  of 
labor  gradually  forced  woman  into  bondage. 
She  became  degraded  in  man's  eyes  and,  what 
was  worse,  in  her  own. 

In  savage  states  of  society  the  helplessness 
of  the  weak  arouses  the  cruelty  of  the  strong. 
The  period  of  gestation,  the  temporary  preoc- 
cupation of  childbirth,  and  the  necessary  care 
of  the  young  compelled  woman  to  seek  protec- 
tion and  aid  from  man.  Brutality  and  strength 
went  hand  in  hand.  Weakness  and  slavery 
were  companions.  Primeval  barbarism  was 
long-lived. 

Hunger  was  man's  first  god;  and  the  seeking 
of  food  was  his  earliest  religion.  Pillage  was 
the  ambition  of  our  ancestors;  warfare  was 
their  glory;  and  the  Great  War  might  imply 
that  yet  there  is  some  ethical  progress  to  be 
made  by  their  descendants. 

41 


42    .WOMAN"  FBOM  BONDAGE  TO  FREEDOM 

Early  man's  aspiration  did  not  rise  much 
above  his  amatory  desires  and  the  taste  for  a 
few  rude  comforts.  Whatever  he  perceived  to 
be  of  service  to  himself,  he  used  with  little 
regard  to  the  rights  of  the  others.  The  things 
that  encumbered  him  in  his  march  through  time 
and  its  wildernesses,  he  discarded.  The  weak 
and  the  aged,  crippled  and  female  children 
were  killed  or  abandoned.  The  robust  women, 
necessary  to  his  well-being  and  useful  as  slaves, 
were  kept  as  chattels.  As  recently  as  in  Spar- 
tan times,  the  remnants  of  some  of  these  hard 
customs  trailed  the  march  of  civilization.  The 
indifferent  attitude  of  the  Greek  mind  toward 
unfortunate  children  however  was  modified  by 
ideals  of  bodily  perfection;  and  these  ideals 
were  transformed  into  art. 

Woman  staggered  for  ages  under  oppression. 
She  was  the  common  property  of  the  tribe, — 
in  no  sense  the  mistress  of  herself.  The  tribe 
was  the  father  of  her  children ;  but  the  mother 
was  responsible  for  their  care,  and  for  that  rea- 
son perhaps  primitive  justice  perceived  dimly 
that  the  child  should  belong  to  the  mother.  This 
was  in  effect  a  victory  for  womanhood.  Many 
ages  later,  society  recognized  that  the  right  of 
inheritance  by  the  logic  of  succession  should 
depend  from  the  female  line.  Long  afterward 
when  this  view  of  natural  justice  became  ob- 


WOMAJST  IN  THE  BORDEELAISTD  OF  HISTORY        43 

scured,  the  pendulum  of  woman's  rights  swung 
backward. 

Marriage  maybe  was  the  second  victory  un- 
consciously achieved  by  woman.  It  may  have 
been  only  a  Cadmean  victory ;  yet  it  was  a  great 
step  from  the  state  of  being  the  common  prop- 
erty of  the  clan  to  a  state  of  marriage,  how- 
ever low  the  form  of  union.  This  acceptance 
of  unity  in  the  mating  of  men  and  women,  ten- 
uous and  tenebrous  as  it  was,  nevertheless  was 
a  momentous  event  in  the  trail  that  primeval 
people  were  blazing  toward  a  civilization  that 
we  moderns  still  pursue  afar-off. 

"When  marriage  had  become  a  custom  gen- 
erally recognized  in  later  epochs  of  prehistory, 
the  dawn  of  civilization  was  breaking.  The 
home  had  appeared  on  earth ;  the  roof -tree  had 
reared  its  symbol  above  the  hearth.  A  spir- 
itual synthesis,  like  an  altar-flame,  burst  forth 
to  warm  the  heart  with  love. 

Woman,  who  long  had  stood  between  man 
and  the  uncertainties  of  the  chase  by  cultivating 
the  soil;  woman,  who  had  stood  between  man 
and  the  misfortuntes  of  war  by  guarding  his 
frocks;  woman,  who  always  had  stood  between 
man  and  extinction  by  the  bearing  and  the  rear- 
ing of  his  children, — woman  at  last  was  able  to 
stand  between  man  and  the  inclemencies  of  life 
by  making  a  home  for  him.  Through  servitude 
she  had  become  the  mother  of  art.  Through 


44          WOMAN   FROM   BONDAGE   TO   FREEDOM 

love  she  became  the  mother  of  everything  worth 
while. 

Motherhood,  the  chief  benefactor  of  man,  was 
the  severest  slave-driver  of  woman.  Mother- 
hood made  her  a  physical  slave,  and  in  later 
times  a  legal  idiot.  Through  aeons  of  servitude 
shackles  were  riveted  on  her  mind.  Through 
love  she  became  the  wife  of  man,  the  mother 
of  virtue,  the  fount  of  the  spirituality  of  our 
race.  Through  all  the  stages  of  motherhood, 
from  the  lowest  physical  to  the  highest  spir- 
itual, she  has  paid  a  penalty  for  every  benefit 
she  has  bestowed  upon  us.  In  every  way  the 
peer  of  man,  her  gifts,  duties,  sacrifices,  servi- 
tude, and  obligations  to  humanity  have  withheld 
from  her  sex  in  the  past  the  opportunities  to 
reach  man's  intellectual  level.  Only  in  spir- 
ituality, during  the  dim  ages  gone,  has  woman 
been  permitted  by  Nature  and  Fate,  or  God 
and  Man,  to  lead  in  progress.  Otherwise  and 
always,  until  most  recent  times,  she  has  pushed 
the  van  of  civilization  so  that  those  who  rode 
in  it  might  dream  of  some  joys  in  this  life  whilst 
she  walked  behind  blinded  by  the  sweat  of  toil 
and  the  dust  of  the  road.  Her  only  consola- 
tion was  the  hope  of  a  life  to  come  in  a  better 
world. 

From  the  unknown  period  of  man's  earliest 
domination  over  woman,  down  to  recent  times, 
he  has  maintained  arbitrary  authority  over  her 


WOMAN  IN  THE  BORDERLAND  OF  HISTORY        45 

person  whilst  taking  ever  subtler  liberties  with 
her  soul.  He  kept  her  in  physical  confinement 
or  in  the  prison  of  pious  fear.  He  called  to  his 
aid  all  the  superstitious  elements  of  religion. 
He  forced  her  to  suppress  her  natural  desires. 
He  told  her  childish  tales,  and  he  fed  her  mind 
with  impossible  precepts  until  she  acquired  in- 
tellectual dyspepsia,  which  threatened  to  be- 
come chronic.  He  educated  her  so  thoroughly 
in  nastiness  that  she  became  puritanical.  She 
was  ashamed  of  her  natural  parts,  acts,  and  im- 
pulses. Ideas  of  sex  grew  to  be  abhorrent  to 
her  or,  following  the  rule  of  reaction  to  ex- 
tremes, she  became  sexually  engrossed.  He 
filled  her  mind  with  dread  lest  she  offend  God 
with  the  physical  pleasure  and  the  spiritual  joy 
which  abide  in  the  house  of  love.  He  did  his  un- 
witting best  to  make  her  thoughts  obscene.  He 
converted  her  into  a  plaything  of  his  lust,  and 
he  trafficked  in  her  charms  as  he  traffics  in 
beef-on-the-hoof.  For  ages,  man's  conduct  was 
public  conduct  and  his  opinion,  public  opinion. 
Now  all  these  oppressive  acts  were  inter- 
woven with  kindly  motives.  Many  stupid  men, 
perfectly  honest,  believed  that  fear  was  the  only 
safe  foundation  of  virtue,  and  that  ignorance 
was  a  bulwark  against  sin.  The  whole  weft 
of  social  progress  is  purple-shotten  and  mingled 
with  threads  of  pure  gold.  The  shuttle  passes 
from  epoch  to  epoch.  Strange  patterns  are 


46          WOMAN   FROM   BONDAGE   TO   FREEDOM 

woven — the  beautiful  together  with  the  hideous. 
In  the  broad  course  of  racial  advance,  retro- 
gressive movements  parallel  the  progressive. 
Our  hope  lies  in  the  forward  tendency  of  the 
general  current. 

The  flux  of  time  brought  woman  to  another 
stage  comparable  to  victory.  This  gain  mod- 
ified her  defeat  in  the  loss  of  succession,  in  the 
line  of  descent.  An  important  factor  in  her 
new  status  was  the  legality  of  monogamy,  which 
already  had  received  ecclesiastical  benediction. 
She  became  the  recognized  mother  of  her  lord 's 
heirs.  Through  her  he  dreamed  of  posthumous 
glory  in  his  sons.  Through  her  he  lived  again. 
Through  her  he  kept  an  avaricious  grip  on  his 
gold  by  passing  it  along  to  his  children.  Woman 
had  acquired  the  dignity  of  definite  and  con- 
crete worth. 

Virgins  now  could  bring  high  prices  to  their 
sires,  position  and  jewels  to  themselves.  This 
legalized  form  of  sanctified  prostitution  has  not 
yet  passed  away.  But  such  things  do  not  shock 
us  who  so  love  the  Bible  that  we  can  not  dis- 
criminate between  what  is  recorded  and  that 
which  is  taught  in  its  pages.  According  to  this 
venerable  book,  there  is  slight  occasion  for  pride 
in  pedigree.  Considering  our  ancestors,  we  are 
getting  on.  If  Leah  and  Rachel  were  sold  to 
Jacob  for  service,  why  may  not  Ella  or  Jane  be 
exchanged  for  position  and  power? 


WOMAN  IN  THE  BORDERLAND  OF  HISTORY        47 

Mrs.  Mill,  in  her  "Enfranchisement  of  Wom- 
an ",  says:  "That  those  who  are  physically 
weaker  should  have  been  made  legally  inferior, 
is  quite  conformable  to  the  mode  in  which  the 
world  has  been  governed.  Until  very  lately, 
the  rule  of  physical  strength  was  the  general 
law  of  human  affairs.  .  .  . 

* '  The  world  is  very  young,  and  has  only  just 
begun  to  cast  off  injustice.  It  is  only  now 
getting  rid  of  negro  slavery.  It  is  only  now 
getting  rid  of  monarchial  despotism.  It  is  only 
now  getting  rid  of  hereditary  feudal  nobility. 
It  is  only  now  getting  rid  of  disabilities  on  the 
ground  of  religion.  It  is  only  beginning  to 
treat  any  men  as  citizens,  except  the  rich  and  a 
favored  portion  of  the  middle-class.  Can  we 
wonder  that  it  has  not  yet  done  as  much  for 
women  ? ' ' 

This  is  too  modern.  Let  us  go  back  for  a 
moment  to  the  ancient  Hellenes.  The  lament 
of  Iphigenia  shows  how  woman  was  regarded 
in  those  cultured  times:  "The  condition  of 
woman  is  worse  than  that  of  all  other  human 
beings.  If  man  is  favored  by  fortune,  he  be- 
comes a  ruler  and  wins  fame  on  the  battle- 
field; and  if  the  gods  have  ordained  him  mis- 
fortune, he  is  the  first  to  die  a  fair  death  among 
his  people.  But  the  joys  of  woman  are  nar- 
rowly compassed;  she  is  given  unasked  in  mar- 
riage, by  others,  often  strangers,  and  when  de- 


48          WOMAN   FBOM   BONDAGE  TO   FREEDOM 

stmction  falls  upon  her  house,  she  is  dragged 
away  by  the  victor." 

"We  have  read  how  Penelope  was  ordered 
about  by  Telemachus ;  and  that  he  had  authority 
even  to  give  his  mother  in  marriage.  We  are 
familiar  with  the  command  of  the  sacred  Tal- 
mud which  says:  "When  thy  daughter  has 
reached  maturity,  set  one  of  thy  slaves  free 
and  betroth  her  unto  him."  By  a  thousand 
similar  records  and  traditions  we  realize  how 
long  human  nature  has  been  loath  to  change  for 
the  better. 

Solon,  the  giver  of  laws,  was  praised  by  a 
contemporary  at  Athens  in  the  fifth  century, 
B.  C.  in  these  words:  "Solon  be  extolled!  for 
thou  hast  brought  public  women  for  the  safety 
of  the  town,  for  the  morals  of  a  town  filled 
with  strong  young  men,  who,  but  for  thy  wise 
institution,  would  have  grven  themselves  up  to 
the  annoyance  and  pursuit  of  women  of  the 
upper  classes."  Even  the  iron-tongued  Demos- 
thenes said:  "We  marry  in  order  to  obtain 
legitimate  children  and  a  faithful  warder  of 
the  house;  we  keep  concubines  as  servants  for 
our  daily  attendance,  but  we  seek  the  Hetaerae 
for  love's  delights." 

I  shall  refer  to  St.  Paul  and  others  of  his 
ilk  later.  Mark  the  words  of  Thucydides: 
"Woman  is  more  evil  than  the  storm-tossed 
waves,  than  the  heat  of  fire,  than  the  fall  of  the 


WOMAN  IN  THE  BORDERLAND  OF  HISTORY        49 

wild  cataract;  if  it  was  a  god  who  created 
woman,  wherever  he  may  be,  let  him  know  that 
he  is  the  unhappy  author  of  the  greatest  ills." 
Thucydides  fared  badly  in  love.  The  unhappy 
author  of  his  ill,  or  somebody  else,  bungled  him 
in  the  making;  and  bungled  lovers  always  are 
all  vinegar  toward  women. 

The  garrulous  Cato  advised  the  heads  of  Ro- 
man families  to  be  more  rigid  in  their  treat- 
ment of  wives;  to  keep  them  in  a  state  of 
"proper  servility"  in  order  that  wives  and 
mothers  should  not  become  public  nuisances. 
This  is  the  attitude  of  male  "antis"  to-day. 

Well  within  the  border  of  authentic  history, 
the  feudal  system,  with  its  military  ideas  and 
ecclesiastical  traditions,  exercised  under  the 
"  rights  of  seignory"  a  monstrous  tyranny  over 
women.  Not  only  did  these  *  *  rights  "  comprise 
a  jurisdiction  that  is  unprintable  now  to  de- 
fine, but  even  the  power  on  occasion  to  deprive 
women  of  life  itself. 

The  vaunted  deeds  of  chivalry  inspire  us 
with  little  admiration.  Chivalrous  indeed  were 
the  times  when  a  shapely  horse  might  compete 
with  a  beautiful  woman;  when  a  man  might 
legally  cudgel  his  wife  for  infidelity  and  beat 
her  for  contradicting  his  statements  or  for  dif- 
fering from  his  opinions !  We  read  that  if  the 
woman  will  insist  on  her  views  she  shall  be 


50          .WOMAN   FROM   BONDAGE   TO   FREEDOM 

1  '  struck  in  the  face  till  the  blood  comes ' '.  Such 
flowers  of  chivalry  are  innumerable. 

In  the  half-lights  of  history,  feudalism  takes 
on  the  colors  of  romance.  In  fact,  much  of 
the  romance  is  false.  The  age  was  savage  and 
superstitious.  It  was  filthy,  violent,  brutal,  and 
barbaric.  Nearly  all  its  poetry  celebrated 
adulterous  love.  The  troubadours  rarely  sang 
to  innocent  maidens;  the  minstrel  knights  sel- 
dom addressed  their  lyrics  to  the  love  of  un- 
married women.  Indeed,  mediaeval  literature 
struck  a  higher  note  and  a  purer  tone  only  after 
the  middle-class  freemen  of  the  cities  became 
strong  enough  to  be  independent  and  wealthy 
enough  to  develop  a  culture  of  their  own.  Only 
after  that  did  women  begin  to  win  honorable 
position  in  society  during  the  Middle  Ages. 

Almost  any  kind  of  violence  however  repul- 
sive may  be  transformed  into  a  ceremonial  cus- 
tom if  it  is  practiced  long  enough  to  acquire 
a  venerable  cast.  Eape  is  a  notable  instance. 
Following  the  decline  of  woman's  wooing — • 
when  she  ceased  to  be  the  woo-man  of  some  pre- 
historic age — force  and  capture  became  the  cus- 
tom. This  practice  of  the  male  is  so  old,  in  one 
form  or  another,  that  the  female  rather  expects 
it.  At  the  first  embrace,  most  women  are  dis- 
appointed if  they  are  not  subjected  at  least 
to  some  euphemism  of  force.  The  very  na- 
ture of  woman  was  modified  by  this  kind  of  vi- 


WOMAN   IN   THE  BORDERLAND   OF   HISTORY      51 

olence  until  a  new  element  arose  in  her  psy- 
chology. This  is  known  to  the  students  of 
erotic  tumescence  or  the  phenomena  of  sexual 
tensions.  The  psychologist  knows  that  this  act 
of  violence  on  man's  part  has  its  complement  in 
woman's  modesty,  among  her  other  complex 
emotions.  Some  factors  of  her  modesty  are 
older  than  our  race;  and  all  the  factors  inter- 
mingle or  blend  in  her  sense  of  decorum ;  some 
are  indicated  by  her  gestures;  others  have 
their  roots  in  the  fear  of  personal  injury,  in 
disgust  and  reprobation.  We  observe  also  that 
jealousy  in  woman's  nature  is  allied  to,  or  par- 
allel with,  a  streak  of  brutality  in  man's.  Both 
in  men  and  women,  jealousy  is  related  to  strong 
amatory  impulses  poorly  governed  by  a  weak 
will  under  which  low-grade  thought  is  in 
gurgitation. 

Eomulus,  as  we  read  in  Ovid,  represents  not 
only  "a  true  king",  but  also  man's  attitude  for 
many  centuries  toward  woman: 

"Providing  Sabine  women  for  his  braves 
Like  a  true  king,  to  get  a  race  of  slaves." 

The  incident  of  the  Sabine  women  is  a  classical, 
as  that  of  the  Belgian  women  is  a  sordid,  ex- 
ample known  to  all.  At  the  present  time  rape 
is  symbolically,  if  not  always  actually,  per- 
formed very  generally  over  the  world  in  the 
consummation  of  marriage.  Even  amongst  the 


52          WOMAN   FEOM   BONDAGE   TO    FREEDOM 

most  cultivated  of  peoples,  the  marriage-bed 
too  often  is  "for  joys  of  matrimonial  rape 
designed". 

For  ages,  woman  was  fair  booty  in  war ;  for 
ages,  only  her  brothers  inherited  from  her 
father;  for  ages,  the  birth  of  a  girl-baby  was 
almost  a  calamity  in  a  family ;  for  ages,  only  her 
brothers  were  educated;  for  ages,  she  was 
taught  chastity  and  forced  to  be  impure;  for 
ages,  she  was  given  in  marriage  against  her 
will;  for  ages,  she  was  compelled  to  earn  her 
bread  in  her  own  family  by  the  most  menial  of 
work;  for  ages,  the  wife  was  subject  to  the 
husband  in  body  and  soul;  it  was  his  "right" 
to  chastise  her  and  otherwise  to  violate  her  per- 
son— to  humiliate  her  and,  as  I  have  said,  even 
to  take  her  life. 

Man  has  cheerfully  thrust  woman  into  pros- 
titution and  then,  in  the  hypocritical  indigna- 
tion of  his  soul,  he  proscribed,  tortured,  and 
otherwise  punished  her  for  the  act.  He  always 
has  been  a  true  believer  in  vicarious  atone- 
ment. For  many  centuries  the  economic  de- 
pendence of  woman  on  man  has  been  almost 
absolute.  During  long  ages  it  never  occurred 
to  him  that  woman  had  a  right  to  economic 
equality,  to  equal  opportunity  for  full  develop- 
ment, and  to  free  and  equal  choice  where  her 
happiness  and  well-being  were  at  stake. 

And  so,  whenever  I  read  pharisaical  homilies 


WOMAN  IN  THE  BORDERLAND  OF  HISTORY        53 

on  the  sins  of  prostitutes  it  makes  me  sick. 
And  whenever  I  hear  of  woman's  ''unfaithful- 
ness" I  can  not  help  feeling  something  akin  to 
delight  in  that  kind  of  crude  justice.  For  it 
seems  to  be  only  an  evening-up  in  the  fitness  of 
things — a  kind  of  poetic  righteousness  which 
shears  the  sheep  that  set  out  to  gather  wool. 
Not  that  I  wish  to  encourage  adulterous  love, 
but  I  can  no  more  weep  over  woman's  marital 
infractions  than  I  can  gloat  over  man's.  It  is  a 
bad  mess  all  around;  but  I  can  excuse  the 
woman  a  little  more  easily  than  I  can  pardon 
the  man. 

Woman  ought  to  be  tired  of  bondage,  tired 
of  flattery,  tired  of  sentimental  nonsense,  and 
of  sexual  patronage;  and  she  is  beginning  to 
show  her  disapproval  of  such  treatment. 
Surely,  it  is  high  time  that  her  personal  dignity 
should  give  the  lie  to  such  twaddle  as  this : 

"By  flatteries  we  prevail  on  womankind; 
As  hollow  banks  by  streams  are  undermined. ' ' 

From  the  strength  of  man's  "passion"  and 
woman's  "weakness"  arose  the  various  sex- 
cults.  The  superstitious  elements  of  religion 
aided  man  in  his  acts  of  conscious  and,  more 
often,  unconscious  oppression  of  woman.  False 
religion  helped  him  to  enslave  and  to  degrade 
her.  Behind  the  mask  of  "consolation",  re- 
ligious superstitution  has  ever  been  her  most 


54       WOMAN  FROM:  BONDAGE  TO  FREEDOM 

insidious  foe.  It  has  been  her  worst  enemy 
because  she  was  taught  to  regard  it  as  her 
best  friend.  She  is  most  under  the  spell  of 
dogma  when  she  is  least  capable  of  belief.  The 
paradox  clears  up  when  we  realize  that  most 
women,  and  men  too  for  that  matter,  think 
they  believe  this  or  that  when  in  truth  they 
indulge  only  slavish  notions  implanted  by  au- 
thority. For  it  requires  free  and  keen  mental 
powers  to  appreciate  the  nature  of  belief,  or 
to  analyze  its  processes.  The  practical  appli- 
cation of  its  processes  therefore  is  necessarily 
restricted,  but  not  necessarily  to  the  priest- 
craft. 

We  see  the  evil  influences  of  sex-cults  bearing 
on  woman  in  the  East  from  prehistoric  times. 
We  see  the  virgin  driven  to  the  Temple  of 
Mylitta  to  be  ravished  by  the  loitering  horde 
of  human  boars  and  lascivious  goats.  Down 
through  Phoenicia,  Syria,  Carthage,  Egypt, 
Greece,  and  Rome  we  can  trace  the  same  de- 
grading rites  and  customs  practiced  in  the 
name  of  religion;  and  nearly  all  of  these  rites 
t<-.ii(]<-A  to  <\<:\)iLS(>  woman. 

The  evils  of  vicious  superstition  were  com- 
mon among  the  Jews  in  Bible  times ;  and  sim- 
ilar evils  have  flourished  among  other  tribes 
and  peoples  over  a  large  part  of  the  world  al- 
most  nvor  Hincc.  In  "the  good  old  days  of  the 
old-fashioned  woman",  the  acme  of  hospitality 


WOMAX  IX  THE  BORDEBLAXD  OF  HISTOBY        55 

was  the  giving  of  wife  or  daughter  to  a  visitor 
for  the  night.  No  doubt  there  are  many  to- 
day who  in  their  hearts  would  welcome  .a  re- 
turn of  those  dear  old  times ;  but  the  develop- 
ment of  what  is  best  in  womanhood  does  not 
proceed  in  that  direction. 

No  human  being  gives  forth  its  best  in  slav- 
ery. Perfect  freedom,  of  course,  is  possible 
only  to  the  enraptured  disembodied  soul  in  a 
salubrious  climate ;  yet  practical  freedom  should 
be  possible  to  corporeal  beings  in  civilized  so- 
ciety. Freedom  does  not  countenance  license 
in  sex-privilege  nor  in  any  other.  But  there 
should  be  no  "mortification  of  the  flesh"  in  one 
class  and  a  glorification  of  the  flesh  in  another 
class  of  human  beings.  Equal  rights  should  be 
the  rule;  for  jnrhere  there  are  equal  rights  to 
every  opportunity,  there  also  is  freedom. 

The  inconsistency  of  man's  age-old  treatment 
of  woman  would  be  ridiculous  if  it  were  less 
harrowing.  From  Solon  down  to  the  crazy 
Otto  Weininger,  her  sex  has  been  discriminated 
against  with  force  and  diatribe.  The  old  law- 
giver encouraged  prostitution,  as  we  have  seen, 
for  the  benefit  of  Athens '  * ' strong  young  men" ; 
and  whilst  he  made  it  legal  for  man  to  degrade 
woman,  he  made  her  degradation  punitory.  His 
laws  called  for  her  imprisonment,  slavery,  or 
death  when  she  broke  her  vows  to  a  brute  per- 
haps for  the  man  she  loved  but  could  not  marry. 


56          WOMAN   FROM   BONDAGE  TO   FREEDOM 

The  essence  of  this  identical  injustice  is  alive 
all  over  the  Christian  world  to-day,  and  it  is 
nurtured  by  priestcraft  in  the  name  of  religion. 
Its  iniquitous  vitality  can  he  accounted  for  only 
by  the  barbarism  that  still  is  in  us  and  by  the 
fact  that  lies  are,  and  ever  have  been,  the  most 
respectable  factors  in  our  system  of  civiliza- 
tion. 

II  y  a  quelque  chose  de  plus  parfait  que 
I'homlme  parfait,  c'est  la  jemm*e  parfaite.  All 
real  men  admit  that;  yet  the  blade  of  chivalry 
is  not  bright  enough  to  maintain  that  barbaric 
traits  exist  only  in  the  nature  of  man.  The 
female  part  of  our  race  has,  and  always  has  had, 
its  full  share.  The  wonder  is  that  woman  should 
have  made  such  amazing  progress  in  spiritual 
and  material  development  under  her  enormous 
handicap. 

Man  has  erected  temples  and  built  shrines  to 
his  lust  while  woman  has  created  the  sanctu- 
aries of  love,  called  homes.  The  lowliest  home 
made  sacred  by  a  woman's  love  and  the  laugh- 
ter of  children  does  more  for  civilization  than 
the  fairest  temple  ever  erected  to  the  Hetaerae 
or  the  finest  cathedral  that  ever  was  builded  to 
God. 

The  religious  symbolism  of  Motherhood,  as 
exemplified  in  Mary,  outweighs  all  the  good  to 
be  found  in  the  symbolism  of  Aphrodite, 
Astarte,  Venus,  Freya,  and  others  of  the  same 


WOMAN  IN  THE  BORDERLAND  OF  HISTORY        57 

genus ;  or  of  Phryne,  Lais  of  Corinth,  and  other 
notables  in  "love's  delight"  whom  Mary  sup- 
planted at  the  rise  of  the  new  religion. 

The  laws  of  Solon,  in  so  far  as  they  were 
humiliating  to  womanhood,  were  a  curse  to 
mankind.  The  Julian  law  of  Augustus  was 
no  better  because,  while  it  provided  for  chil- 
dren, it  did  nothing  to  elevate'  the  moral  tone 
of  marriage;  and  the  monstrous  modification 
of  that  law  by  Tiberius  transformed  it  into  a 
moral  thumbscrew  and  rack  in  the  hands  of 
the  JEdiles.  Indeed,  a  strange  retrospect  is 
furnished  by  the  laws  made  by  men  for  them- 
selves and  those  that  they  fashioned  for  their 
women.  The  lawgivers  for  the  most  part  were 
spiritually  blind  and  stupidly  cruel.  For  every 
misdeed  toward  woman  is  a  sword  that  cuts 
him  who  strikes,  even  as  it  wounds  her  upon 
whom  the  blade  falls. 

Athens,  it  is  true,  had  its  "Golden  Age"; 
but  even  at  that  time  the  better  nature  of  wom- 
an was  constrained  from  all  except  the  gilt. 
The  female  sex  was  not  permitted  to  partici- 
pate as  much  in  the  development  of  civiliza- 
tion as  it  was  forced  to  corrupt  public  morals. 
Little  value  was  set  on  chastity.  With  pro- 
priety a  guest  could  outrage  what  we  con- 
ceive to  be  the  principles  of  hospitality;  and 
with  impunity  he  could  violate  the  higher  laws 
of  nature.  Among  some  of  the  Gnostic  sects, 


58          WOMAN   FKOM   BONDAGE   TO    FREEDOM 

the  wife  was  freely  lent  to  any  filthy  old  tramp 
of  the  Order  while  he  remained  a  visitor  in  the 
honse.  Gods  were  given  all  the  infirmities  of 
men;  priests  and  priestesses  were  corrupt  and 
lecherous.  Yet  the  fame  of  Penelope,  Andro- 
mache, Helen,  and  Hecuba  tells  us  that  the 
Greeks  saw  clearly  into  the  nature  of  woman 
with  its  good  and  bad  traits,  and  that  they  often 
celebrated  her  at  her  best. 

The  kidnaping  of  women,  and  their  subse- 
quent treatment,  stare  coldly  from  the  pages  of 
Homer.  Polygamy  was  common.  Polyandry 
was  permitted  by  the  Code  of  Lycurgus  to  the 
most  beautiful  of  the  Spartan  women,  which 
proves  that  the  Greek  mind,  seven  or  eight  hun- 
dred years  B.  C.,  harbored  some  seeds  of  jus- 
tice.. 

The  Athenian  women  were  wielders  of  phys- 
ical force — believers  in  public  violence  and  per- 
sonal vengeance.  Their  fits  of  passion  bor- 
dered on  madness ;  yet  countless  Greek  women 
of  that  day  were  ideal  wives  and  mothers.  At 
that  time  the  Hetseras  held  strong  social  sway; 
and  they  exercised  an  influence  over  the  most 
enlightened  minds  of  men,  as  their  successors 
in  the  sterile  art  have  done  ever  since. 

In  China,  Tartary,  Thibet,  and  Japan  women 
were  especially  debased.  Wives  were  bought 
and  sold,  harnessed  to  hard  labor,  and  rewarded 
with  harsh  treatment.  In  Japan,  woman  plays 


WOMAN   IN   THE  BORDERLAND   OF   HISTORY      59 

virtually  no  part  in  history.  The  Hebraic  laws, 
heavy  enough,  were  less  galling  to  her  shoul- 
ders than  those  of  the  Buddhists  which  surely 
were  not  light.  The  records  of  Miriam  and 
Deborah,  and  a  few  of  the  less  doubtful  of  the 
Sibylline  verses,  indicate  that  women  in  ancient 
times  took  some  part  in  religious  matters  and 
that  they  were  influential  in  secular  affairs. 
The  early  Israelites  however  were  prone  to  dis- 
regard woman's  natural  dignity  and  to  trample 
ruthlessly  on  her  natural  rights.  Incidentally 
it  may  be  mentioned  that  their  widows  were 
clothed  with  sackcloth  and  " shirts  of  hair", 
even  when  well  rid  of  worthless  husbands. 

In  India,  the  priests  devoted  young  daughters 
to  the  abominable  service  of  the  Shrine.  Here 
women  were  active  in  religious  ceremonies ;  and 
here  always  were  they  preyed  upon  by  disgust- 
ing idolatry.  They  were  crushed  by  the  Jug- 
gernaut, drowned,  buried  alive  with  corpses, 
burned  on  funeral  pyres,  tortured  by  caste,  mar- 
ried as  infants,  and  generally  bedeviled  be- 
yond belief.  Owing  to  the  submissive  nature 
of  their  women,  Hindu  marriages  often  turn 
out  well.  Despite  the  brutality  of  their  treat- 
ment and  the  iniquity  of  the  marriage  cus- 
toms, the  women  for  the  most  part  make  good 
wives,  if  conjugal  worthiness  may  be  expressed 
in  terms  of  servile  degradation.  "The  horrid 
rites  of  idolatry",  according  to  Fullom,  "the 


60          WOMAN   FROM   BONDAGE   TO   FREEDOM 

wicked  devices  of  superstition,  the  monotony 
of  a  secluded  life,  and  a  long  course  of  barbarous 
usage,  have,  in  their  case,  failed  to  deface,  how- 
ever they  might  distort,  the  beautiful  lineaments 
of  the  female  character,  and  almost  every  ac- 
tion of  their  lives  attests  an  abnegation  of 
self." 

As  a  rule,  in  pastoral  ages  women  perform 
the  menial  tasks.  They  tend  the  flocks;  they 
make  the  wool  into  garments  and  the  hides  into 
many  useful  articles.  Women  are  beasts  of 
burden — the  hewers  of  wood  and  the  drawers  of 
water.  Their  clothing  and  personal  orna- 
ments are  prescribed.  They  are  kept  in  sep- 
arate lodgings,  like  cattle.  They  are  ravished 
without  the  slightest  consideration.  They  have 
nothing  to  say  about  marriage  or  divorce ;  and, 
of  course,  nothing  as  to  the  number  of  children 
they  must  bear.  Job's  description  of  the  Trog- 
lodytes might  almost  be  used  as  a  finishing 
touch  to  the  picture. 

Now  and  then  the  rule  has  an  exception. 
Among  the  early  Egyptions,  who  were  a  pas- 
toral people,  women  fared  better.  They  were 
permitted  to  share  in  the  fruits  of  civiliza- 
tion, such  as  they  were,  to  some  purpose;  but 
on  the  whole,  women  were  subordinated,  and 
as  times  grew  worse,  they  were  degraded. 

During  the  flower  of  Egyptian  civilization, 
womanhood  arose  to  a  state  of  true  dignity. 


WOMAN   IN  THE   BORDERLAND   OF   HISTORY      61 

The  Code  of  Hermes  was  so  liberal  that  it 
acknowledged  many  of  women's  natural  rights 
in  a  light  that  is  regarded  as  modern.  It  fa- 
vored monogamy;  and  it  provided  equally  for 
the  equities  of  husband  and  wife.  The  stand- 
ing of  a  princess  was  as  high  as  that  of  a 
prince.  Thennuthis,  daughter  of  Barneses  the 
Great,  is  an  example  frequently  mentioned  by 
authorities,  and  the  example  is  not  solitary. 

It  is  true  that  the  marriage  customs  of  the 
Egyptians  are  more  or  less  obscure;  but  it  is 
known  that  the  rights  of  wives  were  clearly 
defined  and  generally  accepted.  Ties  of  con- 
sanguinity, it  appears,  were  no  barriers  to  wed- 
lock; otherwise  the  marriage  laws  of  this  peo- 
ple were  commendable. 

Jewels  were  much  worn  by  the  women ;  gloves 
were  in  use ;  and  the  appointments  of  the  toilet 
reached  their  rarest  refinement.  Luxurious, 
perfumed  baths,  love  of  flowers  and  fine  rai- 
ment, careful  attention  to  personal  hygiene — 
all  show  a  high  order  of  society.  Free  social 
intercourse  took  place  between  the  sexes,  from 
the  highest  stratum  to  the  lowest,  excepting 
only  the  swineherds.  Woman  took  part  in  pub- 
lic functions,  except  those  of  the  heirarchical 
religious  ceremonies  which,  as  usual,  were  con- 
ducted by  the  men.  But  subordinate  sacred 
offices  were  filled  by  women,  who  also  were  em- 
ployed as  accoucheuses  and  mourners.  Female 


62          WOMAN    FROM   BONDAGE   TO    FREEDOM 

chastity  was  esteemed;  and  the  Seventh  Com- 
mandment of  the  Hebrews  was  Egyptian  stat- 
ute law.  This  law  however  was  one-sided — 
it  was  made  only  for  the  women.  She  who 
broke  it  forfeited  nose  and  ears.  The  same 
''irregularity"  was  easy  on  the  person  and  no 
doubt  on  the  conscience  of  the  man. 

With  the  wane  of  Egyptian  civilization  waxed 
feminine  sorrow.  Women  received  less  and 
less  consideration.  "Their  treatment",  his- 
tory says,  "grew  every  day  worse,  keeping  pace 
with  the  decline  and  corruption  of  the  nation, 
till,  at  last,  we  behold  woman  enduring  cruel 
punishments,  which  modern  justice  withholds 
from  the  vilest  female  criminals.  At  one  time 
she  is  publicly  beaten  with  a  stick;  at  another, 
loaded  with  overwhelming  burdens,  buried  in  a 
dungeon,  or  sent  to  work  at  the  mines — not,  as 
might  be  supposed,  for  any  guilt  of  her  own,  but 
in  expiation  of  the  crime  of  a  brother,  a  hus- 
band, or  a  father.  Diodorus  has  drawn  a  touch- 
ing picture  of  her  sufferings  at  the  mines.  '  No 
attention',  he  observes,  'is  paid  to  her  person; 
she  has  not  even  a  piece  of  rag  to  cover  her- 
self; and  so  wretched  is  her  condition,  that 
everyone  who  witnesses  it  deplores  the  exces- 
sive misery  she  endures.  She  is  allowed  no 
rest  or  intermission  from  toil :  neither  the  weak- 
ness of  age  nor  woman's  infirmities  are  consid- 
ered ;  all  are  driven  to  their  work  with  the  lash, 


WOMAN  IN  THE  BORDERLAND  OF   HISTORY      63 

till  at  length,  overcome  by  the  insupportable 
weight  of  their  afflictions,  they  die  in  the  midst 
of  their  tasks :  so  that  they  long  for  death  as 
far  preferable  to  life'." 

It  would  be  a  prodigious  task  to  describe 
woman  as  she  was  in  the  borderland  of  history, 
with  its  shadowy  traditions.  About  the  best 
that  can  be  done  is  to  give  glimpses  of  her  sta- 
tion as  it  appears  here  and  there  at  earlier  and 
later  times.  But  what  she  was,  she  no  longer  is. 
Even  briefly  summarized,  her  achievements 
challenge  the  thoughtful  consideration  and  the 
admiration  of  mankind.  As  we  look  at  the 
shifting  mirages  of  the  terrible  centuries  dead, 
we  dream  hopefully  of  the  future.  Seeing  what 
has  been  done,  we  foresee  partly  at  least  what 
may  be  accomplished. 

Woman  domesticated  man,  and  she  started 
him  on  the  road  to  civilization.  With  the  ad- 
vent of  war,  she  had  all  the  work  to  do.  As  I 
have  said,  she  became  an  adept  in  homecraft 
and  in  the  arts  of  peace.  Some  of  her  inven- 
tions have  been  mentioned.  She  taught  her- 
self to  weave  and  to  spin,  how  to  make  clothing 
for  her  naked  babes,  how  to  protect  herself  from 
the  weather.  She  invented  the  potter's  wheel, 
the  distaff,  and  fibrous  cloth.  Many  centuries 
ago  her  Carib  sisters  were  cotton-planters,  and 
they  manufactured  cotton  goods.  At  the  same 
period  men  were  engaged  in  huntcraft  and  war- 


64       'WOMAN  FROM  BONDAGE  TO  FEEEDOM 

craft;  they  were  inventing  implements  of  de- 
struction, modes  of  enslaving,  predatory  meth- 
ods, and  the  various  arts  of  quarreling,  of  re- 
prisal, and  of  punishment. 

By  establishing  the  home,  by  developing  agri- 
culture and  the  arts  of  peace,  woman  contrib- 
uted the  most  important  elements  of  civiliza- 
tion. During  some  of  the  pastoral  epochs,  she 
even  reached  a  station  of  comparative  ease  and 
comfort.  Man  relieved  her  of  some  of  her- 
burdens — protected,  and  helped  her  to  feed  her 
children.  Now  he  was  more  regularly  occupied 
than  during  earlier  days  when  almost  his  sole 
pursuit  was  the  chase. 

And  so  one  finds  that  woman's  hardships  and 
burdens,  her  cares  and  trials,  her  sufferings  and 
servitude,  were  not  all  imposed  on  her  by  the 
premeditated  cruelty  of  man ;  but  that  they  fell 
upon  her  rather  in  the  natural  order  of  things 
which  apportioned  to  each  sex  its  work  and  to 
one  sex  excessively  dismal  periods. 

Necessity  drew  upon  early  man  for  bursts  of 
exertion  as  he  struggled  with  Nature  and  his 
own  kind  for  food  and  life.  These  drafts  were 
followed  by  equally  necessary  periods  of  rest, 
while  woman  toiled  on  and  on  toward  condi- 
tions that  slowly  forced  her  into  sedentary  oc- 
cupations,— and  her  work  was  never  done. 

From  the  time  when  our  progenitors  left  the 
branches  of  trees  to  live  on  the  ground,  down 


WOMAN  IN  THE  BORDERLAND  OF  HISTORY        65 

to  the  present  era,  the  division  of  labor  be- 
tween the  sexes  has  been  unfair  in  kind  and 
unjust  in  effect  upon  the  development  of  woman- 
hood. Arthur  Mee  expresses  the  belief  that 
"Man  has  done  most  of  the  work  requiring 
power  used  swiftly  and  violently.  .  .  .  He 
built  the  boat  which  enabled  the  human  race, 
probably  in  the  Old  Stone  Age,  to  spread  over 
the  whole  habitable  world;  and  he  solved  the 
problem  of  a  constant  meat  and  milk  supply  by 
domesticating  many  of  the  animals  he  once 
hunted.  He  founded  religion  and  philosophy 
and  law,  and  many  of  the  larger  arts  of  life." 
But  woman,  in  founding  the  arts  of  peace,  in 
domesticating  wild  birds  and  beasts,  in  discov- 
ering the  value  of  roots  and  herbs  and  thus  lay- 
ing the  foundation  of  pharmacy  and  medicine, 
was  easily  man's  equal  in  advancing  the  race. 

Through  the  ages  men  and  women  have 
worked  side  by  side,  each  sex  for  the  most  part 
following  different  pursuits,  yet  tending  in  the 
long  run  toward,  whilst  never  reaching,  a  state 
of  economic  equality.  This  has  been  their 
fixed,  though  unconscious,  goal:  In  diversity 
of  work,  diversity  of  character,  diversity  of 
ideal,  emotion,  psychology,  and  of  function,  they 
achieve  at  last  unity  of  soul.  On  this  synthesis 
civilization  must  stand. 

At  certain  times  they  have  approached  nearer 
this  happy  state  than  at  others.  All  progress 


66          WOMAN   FROM   BONDAGE   TO   FREEDOM 

is  rhythmic.  The  Book  of  Proverbs  more  than 
hints  at  this  state;  and  it  is  of  this  that  the 
ancient  poets  dreamed ;  out  of  it  they  spun  their 
beautiful  fables  of  the  Golden  Age,  when  women 
played  their  parts  politically  as  well  as  so- 
cially and  in  religion.  Unfortunately,  the  rec- 
ords of  civilized  nations  do  not  go  back  very 
far.  The  immense  antiquity  of  the  human  race 
is  only  beginning  to  dawn  upon  us.  The  uni- 
versality of  symbol,  tradition,  and  ceremony 
among  detached  peoples,  some  of  them  even 
without  a  written  language,  puzzle  us  less  as 
we  realize  more  how  very  old  are  many  of  our 
fairest  dreams  of  civilization. 

Periods  so  relatively  recent  as  those  of  the 
first  dynasty  of  the  Egyptians  and  the  social 
life  of  the  early  Cretans,  are  veiled.  Yet  we 
know  that  as  much  as  six  thousand  years  ago 
woman  was  given  some  political  consideration. 
Two  thousand  years  later,  her  honor  and  in- 
tegrity of  character  were  respected  somewhat 
by  the  Babylonian  laws.  Again  we  observe  a 
kind  of  parallelism  running  through  the  eighth 
and  the  twelfth  Egyptian  dynasties,  and  the 
Elizabethan  and  the  Victorian  periods  of  Eng- 
lish history,  when  queens  reigned  in  their  own 
right. 

At  such  times  as  woman  has  drawn  nearer  to 
general  economic  equality  with  man,  her  field 
broadened  to  enter  the  priesthood,  not  only,  but 


WOMAN  IN  THE  BORDERLAND  OF  HISTORY        67 

to  embrace  the  minor  divinities  as  well.  In 
Babylonia,  Istar  was  the  godmother ;  in  Egypt, 
Isis  was  the  wife  of  Osiris;  and  Astarte  held 
sway  over  the  other  goddesses  of  the  Assyrians ; 
whilst  in  ancient  Arabia  and  in  other  lands,  the 
goddesses  seem  to  have  been  more  powerful 
than  the  gods. 

Now,  coming  down  from  goddesses  to  peas- 
ant women,  the  world  finds  an  example  in  Deb- 
orah, which  symbolizes  a  type  for  sagacity  and 
endurance.  It  has  long  been  known  that  peas- 
ant women  possess  characteristics,  such  as  en- 
ergy, the  faculty  for  management,  mother-wit, 
and  others  of  a  purely  physical  nature  involv- 
ing glandular  functions  and  erogenous  areas 
that  are  not  possessed  by  women  generally  in 
the  higher  walks  of  life.  The  lover  seeking 
romantic  delights  of  a  kind  is  less  likely  to  be 
disappointed  with  Judy  0  'Grady  than  with  the 
Colonel's  Lady. 

Man  in  time  turned  his  attention  from  the 
making  of  weapons  to  the  making  of  tools.  His 
apprenticeship  as  an  inventor  of  instruments  of 
destruction  served  him  well  as  an  inventor  and 
manufacturer  of  implements  of  agriculture,  of 
art,  of  commerce,  and  of  science.  His  art  of 
handling  weapons  enabled  him  the  better  to 
handle  tools.  And  although  woman  was  the 
first  to  think  of  planting  seeds,  man  first  ir- 
rigated the  soil.  He  utilized  the  bucket  of  her 


68          WOMAN    FROM   BONDAGE   TO    FREEDOM 

invention  and  made  it  do  the  work  of  a  pump ;  he 
took  her  hoe  and  made  a  plow  of  it,  to  which  he 
harnessed  her  and  later  his  domesticated  ani- 
mals ;  and  finally  he  hitched  up  steam  and  elec- 
tricity. He  modified,  improved,  and  glorified 
woman's  inventions  until  she  retired  from  the 
field  to  the  home  to  devote  herself  more  particu- 
larly to  the  domestic  arts. 

The  reapportionment  of  labor  between  the 
sexes  had  a  depressing  effect  upon  the  position 
of  woman.  In  some  parts  of  the  world  it  made 
her  a  prisoner;  she  was  subjected  to  moral  and 
physical  tyranny;  her  atmosphere  was  poi- 
soned; she  was  both  pampered  and  enslaved; 
nameless  indignities  were  thrust  upon  her.  A 
large  area  of  her  brain  was  forced  to  lie  fal- 
low. Weeds  sprang  up  where  flowers  should 
have  grown.  What  should  have  been  a  garden 
became  a  desert — at  best,  an  oasis.  Elemental 
storms  swept  the  barren  wastes.  Unwhole- 
some fruits  grew  upon  the  little  fertile  spot 
she  had  learned  to  regard  as  her  world — her 
"proper  sphere".  Her  soul  was  crippled.  For 
ages  she  accepted  her  lot  as  natural  to  her  sex, 
or  as  a  god-given  punishment  for  her  "sin"; 
she  asked  for  nothing  else  than  what  she  was 
used  to;  she  fiercely  condemned  her  own  kind 
for  looking  toward  the  east,  for  longing  for 
the  dawn,  for  attempting  to  arise,  for  calling 
for  help,  for  trying  to  escape  from  prison,  for 


WOMAN  IN   THE  BORDERLAND  OF   HISTORY      69 

looking  upward,  and  at  last  for  wanting  to 
vote,  and  for  wishing  to  be  consulted  when  they 
are  to  bear  children  and  by  whom. 

Whenever  vice  has  been  most  flourishing, 
woman  has  been  the  chief  victim;  yet  strange 
to  say,  in  most  degenrate  times  she  has,  other 
things  being  equal,  shown  less  than  has  man 
the  ravages  of  devolution  and  of  moral  decad- 
ence. In  a  sense,  woman  may  be  likened  to  the 
Jew,  who  thrives  on  persecution :  the  more  she 
is  discriminated  against,  the  stronger  grows 
the  solidarity  of  her  virtues.  And  it  may  be 
that  the  epoch  of  her  decay  shall  only  begin 
when  she  becomes  the  dominant  and  militant 
sex. 


WOMAN  AND  EELIGION 

HE  religious  instinct  is  one  of  the 
finest  elements  in  human  nature. 
How  it  arose,  how  it  became  im- 
planted, and  why  it  has  persisted  in 
our  souls  need  not  detain  us,  even  if  we  knew. 
There  it  is!  We  have  no  choice  other  than  to 
make  the  best  of  it. 

The  longing  to  live  again  may  spring  from 
our  shortened  cycle  of  life,  which  is  cut  down  by 
the  indiscretions  of  ignorance.  Nevertheless  it 
is  a  worthy  longing  which,  when  reasonably 
indulged,  need  work  no  hardship  on  our  lives, 
physically,  morally,  nor  intellectually.  The 
longing  to  do  right  in  this  world,  to  live  in  har- 
mony with  the  great  moral  forces  of  the  uni- 
verse, to  express  our  gratitude  to  the  intel- 
lectual-ethical source,  which  the  world  believes 
to  exist  and  which  it  calls  God,  for  short,  is 
not  an  unworthy  longing.  We  may  regard  it, 
if  we  please,  as  a  childish  emotion  of  a  young 
race.  If  it  is  a  mere  childish  longing,  we  shall 
grow  out  of  it  in  time;  but  meanwhile  it  will 
serve  us  well  as  spiritual  beings  thrilled  with 

aspirations. 

71 


72          WOMAN    FEOM   BONDAGE   TO    FREEDOM 

The  hope  to  live  again,  to  be  able  to  repair 
the  mistakes  of  our  short  lives;  the  hope  for 
mercy  to  the  maltreated,  justice  to  the  de- 
frauded; the  hope  that  those  who  have  been 
mauled  in  this  world  may  find  sympathetic  treat- 
ment in  another ;  the  hope  to  embrace  again  the 
loved  and  lost,  to  unite  the  threads  of  conscious- 
ness severed  by  death,  to  efface  the  memory 
of  dead  sorrow  with  living  joy,  is  an  estimable 
hope,  however  irrational  it  may  seem  to  some. 

It  is  no  crime  to  believe  that  the  fountain- 
head  of  morality  is  moral;  that  the  source  of 
intellectuality  is  intellectual ;  that  the  mother  of 
emotions  is  emotive;  that  the  principles  of 
beauty  are,  in  some  inscrutable  manner,  born 
of  supreme  design;  that  the  good  within  us 
comes  from  God.  Neither  is  it  a  sin  to  reverse 
this  belief:  to  speculate  on  the  possibility  of 
individual  morality,  flowing  as  tiny  streams  into 
a  great  reservoir,  which  ceaselessly  becomes 
more  and  more  moral.  It  is  no  sin  to  think 
that  personal  intellectuality  contributes  to  the 
collective  intellectuality  of  the  race.  It  is  not 
sinful  to  believe  that  private  emotions  feed  a 
superlative  public  emotion;  that  the  principles 
of  beauty  are  crystallizing  into  a  supreme  de- 
sign; that  the  good  within  us  all  is  slowly  cre- 
ating God.  It  neither  is  sinful  nor  criminal 
to  speculate,  to  reason,  to  believe,  to  have  faith, 
to  indulge  hope,  to  reject,  to  doubt,  to  make  a 


WOMAN   AND   RELIGION  73 

god  of  reason,  or  a  religion  of  ethics,  or  a  prayer 
of  work,  or  a  hymn  of  beauty. 

We  may  believe  in  one  God  or  in  many  gods 
or  in  no  god  without  helping  or  harming  our 
souls — without  placing  in  jeopardy  a  single 
chance  to  live  again.  We  may  believe  that 
every  human  being  is  destined  to  become  a  god, 
or  that  when  life  is  done  each  shall  forever  cease 
to  be.  Our  religious  beliefs  and  faiths,  our 
postulates  and  hopes  are  negative,  sociologic- 
ally. The  religious  instinct  should  be  cultivated 
until  it  flowers  as  a  cosmetic  garden  in  the  front- 
yard  of  civilization.  Let  no  man  destroy  its 
flowers,  for  they  have  been  watered  with  tears 
and  nourished  by  hope!  But  let  all  who  love 
their  neighbors  help  to  pull  the  weeds,  and  to 
kill  the  lice  that  feed  and  fatten  on  the  young 
leaves ! 

Religion  never  will  harm  the  soul,  no  matter 
how  enlightened  we  become.  It  is  only  when 
we  make  dogmas  of  our  speculations;  when  we 
try  to  force  them  upon  others;  when  we  re- 
quire performances  that  are  hateful,  sacrifices 
that  are  questionable,  hardships  that  are  need- 
less, efforts  that  are  sterile,  ceremonies  that 
are  ridiculous, — then  only  do  we  pervert  the 
religious  instinct  and  convert  it  into  an  instru- 
ment of  torture ;  and  then  it  is  that  we  enslave 
the  soul  to  superstition. 

We  conceive  of  space  as  largely  as  we  can, 


74          WOMAN   FROM   BONDAGE   TO    FREEDOM 

and  that  conception  we  call  "the  boundless  uni- 
verse ".  There  is  no  harm  in  suspecting  that 
beyond  our  utmost  conceptions  of  space  and 
time  there  are  other  "universes"  and  other 
"times".  We  conceive  as  much  as  we  can  of 
power,  and  at  the  apex  of  that  conception  we  put 
God.  There  can  be  no  harm  in  asking  ourselves 
whether  there  may  not  be  other  gods  and  other 
realms  beyond  our  noblest  conceptions  of  power 
and  space.  An  innocent  amusement  is  that 
which  postulates  other  universes  equally  bound- 
less— each  with  duration  as  endless  as  a  circle 
and,  like  circles,  intersecting  without  interfer- 
ence. We  may  without  guilt  conceive  endless 
universes  as  we  conceive  circles,  of  one  plane 
or  of  different  planes,  expanding  or  contracting 
throughout  infinity.  We  even  may  postulate 
an  infinite  series  of  infinities,  since  infinity 
begins  where  our  conception  ends.  If  we  are 
able,  we  may  reverse  our  conceptions  of  dura- 
tion and  space,  regarding  them  as  points-of-view 
peculiar  to  our  make  of  mind — as  positional 
consciousness,  as  mere  relativity,  or  as  mathe- 
matical assumptions  in  conceptual  trigonom- 
etry. Or  we  may  cast  all  such  efforts  aside  as 
futile  metaphysics  leading  us  nowhere,  without 
hurt  to  our  souls  or  harm  to  our  intellects. 
Then,  when  we  are  all  through,  we  come  back 
to  the  religious  instinct  that  is  part  of  our  na- 
ture ;  and  we  still  are  unable  to  affirm  that  it  is 


WOMAN   AND  BELIGION  75 

the  unenlightened  part,  or  a  source  of  light  it- 
self. We  must  treat  it  therefore  in  a  com- 
monsense  way  by  making  the  best  of  it.  Scoffing 
will  not  help  us  where  reason  and  intuition 
fight  and  fail — where  revelation  is  silent.  Our 
one  clear  duty,  as  intellectual  beings,  is  to  see 
to  it  that  neither  this  instinct  nor  our  treatment 
of  it  results  detrimentally  to  individuals  singly 
or  collectively. 

A  perversion  of  the  religious  instinct  clouds 
our  lives  with  superstitution  and  it  fills  our 
minds  with  fear.  By  denying  the  instinct,  by 
trying  to  kill  it,  we  wound  our  souls  as  birds 
bruise  their  wings  beating  against  the  bars  of  a 
cage.  There  is  nothing  to  fear  but  everything 
to  hope  for  in  religion.  There  is  everything  to 
fear  and  nothing  to  hope  for  in  superstition. 
Superstition  always  has  carried  a  knife  under 
its  cloak. 

All  religions  are  both  false  and  true:  mix- 
tures of  pious  fraud  and  sincere  devotion.  No 
religion  ever  was  perfectly  pure ;  and  the  false 
elements  of  religion  have  been  the  enemy  of 
woman  since  the  first  syllable  of  recorded  fact. 
Superstition  will  remain  her  enemy  until  she 
laughs  it  out  of  court.  She  must  overthrow 
the  tyranny  of  dogma  to  gain  her  intellectual 
freedom,  just  as  surely  as  she  had  to  overcome 
the  tyranny  of  prejudice  in  politics  to  gain  her 
suffrage.  She  must  break  the  bonds  that  bind 


76          WOMAN   FEOM   BONDAGE   TO   FREEDOM 

her  soul  if  she  would  be  free.  And  she  never 
can  be  truly  free  so  long  as  she  is  hounded  by 
superstitious  fear ;  so  long  as  it  is  possible  for 
priests  to  maintain  authority  over  her  higher 
nature;  so  long  as  church  or  state  may  force 
unwelcome  babes  upon  her  breast. 

Xo  one  supposes  that  modern  priests  are  es- 
pecially wicked  or  that  as  a  class  they  mean  to 
be  bad.  On  the  contrary,  the  most  of  them  are 
good,  self-sacrificing,  zealous,  and  misled.  But 
I  know  the  priesthood  is  an  evil  in  so  far  as  it 
has  power  to  subjugate  the  mind  through  fear 
of  punishment  in  some  other  world;  that  no 
form  of  slavery  enervates  the  dignity  and  the 
healthy  glow  of  character  more  effectually  than 
does  the  spiritual  bondage  propagated  and 
sustained  by  the  Confessional.  I  know  the 
priesthood  is  questionable  to  the  degree  of  its 
recognized  authority  and  potential  power  to 
practice  priestcraft  on  character  during  its 
formative  period.  I  believe  the  priesthood  is 
mistaken  when  it  disseminates  dogma  for  spirit- 
ual truth ;  that  it  is  dishonest  when  it  pretends 
to  have  revelations  of  divine  will,  and  in  so  far 
as  it  spreads  fiction  and  faith  as  ascertained 
facts.  The  priesthood  is  stupid  when  it  promul- 
gates absurd  doctrines;  when  it  teaches  mir- 
acles ;  when  it  builds  on  unsound  premises ;  and 
above  all,  when  it  neglects  the  rational  training 
of  young  minds  under  its  sway.  In  a  word,  the 


WOMAN   AND  RELIGION  77 

authority  to  do  evil  through  stupidity  or  design 
—the  power  to  do  evil  under  the  mantle  of 
righteousness — that  authority  or  that  power, 
active  or  passive,  is  a  perpetual  menace  to  the 
best  interests  of  mankind.  No  amount  of  in- 
genious sophistry  can  justify  it;  no  argument 
can  uphold  it.  It  is  contrary  to  ethics,  to  all 
nobility  of  soul,  to  clear  reason  and  humane 
intuition,  alike, — to  the  very  nature  of  things, 
fundamentally;  and  it  persists  only  as  a  flaw 
in  every  suprastructure  that  ever  has  been 
builded  on  the  bedrock  of  decency  and  natural 
commonsense. 

The  religions  of  mankind  have  been  many; 
yet  running  through  most  of  them  one  discovers 
two  principles :  the  male,  or  dominating ;  the  fe- 
male, or  passive.  Man  usually  has  made  his 
tutelary  divinities  in  his  own  image,  and  nat- 
urally therefore  many  of  them  have  been  sorry 
figures.  There  was  Bacchus  or  Dionysus,  who 
was  worshiped  by  the  Greeks  and  celebrated 
in  their  Choral  Odes.  The  Egyptians  wor- 
shiped virtually  the  same  god  under  the  name 
of  Osiris.  Various  other  names  were  given  to 
him  by  Arabs,  Persians,  Scythians,  and  other 
ancient  peoples.  He  is  diversely  represented, 
now  as  a  goat — which  is  not  a  bad  idea  when 
one  thinks  of  the  lubricity  of  the  lesser  gods 
and  their  sons;  again  his  sign  is  the  phallus, 
which  throws  all  euphemism  to  the  winds; 


78          WOMAN   FROM   BONDAGE  TO   FREEDOM 

sometimes  his  sign  is  the  bull,  the  horse,  the 
cock,  the  pine-cone,  the  church-spire ;  he  also  is 
symbolized  by  fire,  by  evergreens,  by  fruits,  and 
by  the  sacred  grove ;  occasionally  his  spirit  con- 
descended to  enter  fauns  and  satyrs,  his  at- 
tendants. Great  as  he  was,  there  was  one  greater 
and  that  was  Zeus,  son  of  Kronos,  the  infinite 
Father  in  Mystic  theology — Father  and  Son  in 
poetic  Mythology. 

The  male  principle,  it  is  true,  has  not  always 
predominated  in  religion,  mythology,  and  art. 
But  on  the  whole,  the  female  principle  has  been 
duly  passive  notwithstanding  the  influence  of 
Demeter  in  Greece,  of  Isis  in  Egypt,  of  Astarte, 
Venus,  Hertha,  and  so  forth  in  other  countries. 
Under  whatever  name,  she  remained  the  god- 
dess of  the  passive-reproductive  principle  of 
the  earth.  The  fact  that  she  once  was  the  pa- 
troness of  agriculture  suggests  that  the  first 
farmers  were  women.  That  she  once  was  the 
tutelar  deity  of  legislation  and  social  order 
seems  strange  to  us  moderns  who  felt  the  heat 
of  woman's  heroic  efforts  to  gain  a  voice  in  the 
making  of  laws  under  which  she  must  live. 
Cybele,  Ehea,  or  Magna  Mater  was  at  one  time 
widely  worshiped  and  justly  celebrated.  The 
Universal  Mother,  "the  soul  of  everything'*, 
was  beautifully  commemorated  in  the  Orphic 
Hymns.  Thus  it  appears  that  the  spiritual  na- 


WOMAN   AND   RELIGION  79 

ture  of  woman  was  idealized  in  one  epoch,  to  be 
forgotten  in  others. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  go  back  to  the  primitive 
philosophy  called  Animism,  from  which  religion 
sprang,  and  to  follow  the  effects  on  woman  of 
all  the  different  cults  and  sects  down  through 
Polytheism  and  the  Nomistic  religions.  It  is 
enough  if  her  status  is  briefly  sketched  under 
one  of  the  Individualistic  religions,  since  the 
modifications  of  the  others  are  mostly  epochal 
and  environmental,  whilst  to  all  purposes  they 
remain  essentially  the  same. 

During  the  infancy  of  Christianity,  it  was  the 
women  who  most  eagerly  embraced  this  new 
hope  of  emancipation.  So  great  was  their  zeal 
that  many  became  martyrs,  while  thousands 
were  missionaries  and  combatants.  Without 
their  far-reaching  influence,  the  new  religion 
could  not  have  been  established.  For  it  was  in 
the  nature  of  woman  that  the  spirituality  of 
Christianity  found  rootage  strong  enough  to 
carry  it  over  Europe ;  and  ever  since,  it  has  been 
in  the  characteristic  emotional  nature  of  woman 
that  the  Church  has  found  its  abiding  strength. 

The  Church  grew  at  the  expense  of  the  life 
that  supported  it ;  but  spiritually  it  was  loath  to 
turn  toward  women.  Of  course  the  Church 
fathers  could  not  rise  above  the  source  of  their 
inspiration.  The  Sacred  Scriptures  are  not  es- 
pecially flattering  to  womanhood.  Little  con- 


80          WOMAN   FROM   BONDAGE  TO   FREEDOM 

sideration  is  shown  for  the  beings  that  always 
have  borne  the  major  burdens  of  the  race.  Why 
should  the  Church,  founded  on  these  Scriptures, 
be  more  tenderly  disposed  toward  women  than 
the  Scriptures  themselves? 

In  the  Old  Testament  woman  is  regarded  as 
a  chattel  of  man.  God  addressed  himself  only 
to  men,  unless  he  wished  to  scold.  On  other 
occasions  this  Xomistic  or  Scriptural  God  was 
solicitous  of  eunuchs,  especially  those  "that 
were  eunuchs  for  the  kingdom  of  heaven's 
sake".  We  know,  if  we  know  anything,  that  the 
eunuch  is  not  comparable  to  a  woman  in  any- 
thing worth  while.  Yet  the  eunuch  was  ex- 
alted and  the  woman  was  debased.  Moreover, 
why  women,  the  best  friends  of  Christ,  should 
have  been  shabbily  treated  by  his  disciples, 
would  remain  a  mystery  if  we  had  not  learned 
to  regard  it  as  one  of  the  false  steps  of  religion. 

The  apostle,  who  advertised  Christianity  in- 
ternationally, was  hardly  a  friend  of  woman. 
St.  Paul  began  as  a  Pharisee,  and  he  ended  as  a 
thorn  in  her  side.  He  believed  in  the  patriarchal 
traditions  of  the  Jews;  he  upheld  the  Mosaic 
laws ;  and  he  seemed  to  have  no  conception  of 
woman's  natural  dignity  and  rights.  The  whole 
weight  of  his  influence  was  against  her;  and  in 
time,  even  his  prejudices  crept  into  the  canon 
law  of  the  church.  This  delightful  old  saint 
looked  upon  woman  as  a  thing  unclean  and  not 


WOMAN   AND  RELIGION  81 

good  for  man  to  touch.  If  there  ever  was  a 
saint  created  with  the  creation  of  an  ass,  para- 
phrasing Jeremiah,  it  was  this  same  old  Paul. 
He  so  loved  the  spirit  that  he  hated  the  flesh. 
But  his  bad  taste  and  worse  manners  probably 
were  sincere,  since  there  is  no  record  of  his 
marriage.  He  believed  that  the  sacerdotal  gen- 
tlemen who  had  lost  their  extraneous  organs 
were  best  fitted  to  be  the  fathers  of  the  church 
— and  in  this  he  was  correct.  No  doubt  it  would 
have  been  far  better  for  women  if  all  sacerdotal 
gentlemen  had  been  of  the  same  order. 

St.  Paul  divided  religion,  like  an  apple,  in 
halves  with  one  stroke :  the  two  parts  were  psy- 
chical and  spiritual,  leaving  nothing  for  any 
other  element  of  our  being.  His  doctrine  cruci- 
fied the  flesh  to  the  very  core  of  lunacy.  The 
unclean  direct  and  indirect  influences  of  his 
teaching  trailed  moral  leprosy  and  bodily  filth 
all  through  the  Middle  Ages;  and  it  did  this, 
unfortunately,  in  the  guise  of  religion.  Woman 
was  countenanced  in  her  natural  nastiness  sim- 
ply because  she  was  necessary;  and  she  never 
was  forgiven  the  sin  of  having  caused  the  fall 
of  man.  Similar  idiotic  traits  still  exist  in  the 
human  mind.  On  many  occasions  I  have  heard 
political  henchmen  storm  against  the  candidacy 
of  a  Jew  for  office  on  the  sole  grounds  that  he 
was  a  " Christ  killer". 

Peter  and  Paul  both  taught  that  man  should 


82          WOMAN    FROM   BONDAGE   TO    FREEDOM 

be  the  boss  in  the  conjugal  partnership  of  thg 
home.  They  believed  that  the  wife,  no  matter 
how  good,  should  be  subject  to  the  husband,  no 
matter  how  bad.  Paul  was  vehemently  opposed 
to  the  higher  education  of  woman.  Meekness, 
silence,  subjection — these  were  her  jewels,  her 
virtues!  The  idea  of  co-education,  of  democ- 
racy for  both  sexes,  of  equal  opportunity  before 
the  law,  would  have  shocked  St.  Paul  pro- 
foundly. 

No  longer  ago  than  the  seventeenth  century, 
according  to  Macaulay,  the  condition  of  women 
among  the  pious  Scottish  Highlanders,  was  ap- 
palling. An  observer  "  would  have  seen,  wher- 
ever he  turned,  that  dislike  of  steady  industry, 
and  that  disposition  to  throw  on  the  weaker 
sex  the  heaviest  part  of  manual  labor,  which 
are  characteristic  of  savages.  He  would  have 
been  struck  by  the  spectacle  of  athletic  men 
basking  in  the  sun,  angling  for  salmon,  or  tak- 
ing aim  at  grouse,  while  their  aged  mothers, 
their  pregnant  wives,  their  tender  daughters, 
were  reaping  the  scanty  harvest  of  oats.  Nor 
did  the  women  repine  at  their  hard  lot.  In  their 
view  it  was  quite  fit  that  a  man,  especially  if 
he  assumed  the  aristocratic  title  of  Duinhe 
Wassel  and  adorned  his  bonnet  with  the  eagle's 
feather,  should  take  his  ease  except  when  he 
was  fighting,  hunting,  or  marauding."  As  re- 
cently as  1915,  I  myself  have  seen  equally  bad 


WOMAN   AND  RELIGION  83 

conditions  in  the  very  religions  "outport"  set- 
tlements of  Newfoundland. 

To  a  varying  degree,  this  has  been  the  gen- 
eral tendency  of  pseudo-Christianity  toward 
woman,  just  as  had  been  that  of  the  other  false 
contributary  religious  elements  which  preceded 
the  new  religion.  Yet,  despite  the  force  of  this 
tendency,  woman  has  progressed;  her  spiritual 
nature  has  expanded ;  she  has  grown  more  ten- 
der ;  her  intellectual  horizon  has  broadened ;  her 
moral  nature  has  developed;  and  with  every- 
thing against  her,  her  position,  especially 
among  the  French,  American,  and  English  peo- 
ples, slowly  became  higher  and  better.  Even 
the  Church  no  longer  holds  councils  to  discuss 
the  possibility  of  woman  possessing  a  soul,  as 
it  did  at  the  Council  of  Macon  in  585.  The  Cal- 
vinistic  nightmare  has  passed  forever.  Jesuit- 
ical casuistry  and  theological  sophistry  no 
longer  are  accepted  seriously  in  society  that 
can  both  read  and  think.  Commonsense  in 
some  measure  has  fallen  to  the  lot  of  man,  who 
has  not  had  the  power,  if  he  had  the  wish,  to 
exclude  woman  from  its  benefits. 

Such  worthies  as  Tertullian  and  Jerome  were 
bitter  in  their  denunciation  of  woman — obscene 
in  their  abhorrence  of  her  sex.  Origen  was  so 
fearful  of  "sensual  lust"  that  he  put  tempta- 
tion forever  away  from  his  body  by  what  we 
should  call  to-day  rather  crude  operative  in- 


84          WOMAN   FROM   BONDAGE   TO    FREEDOM 

terference;  and  if  he  had  thrown  in  the  hide 
for  good  measure  he  would  have  done  admir- 
ably. Augustine,  Euseubius,  and  Jerome  looked 
upon  celibates  as  " heaven's  dazzling  stars ", 
whilst  fathers  and  mothers  were  classed  with 
the  dark  orbs  or  " stars  without  light".  One 
needs  a  new  vocabulary,  or  none,  to  deal  pa- 
tiently with  such  notions.  These  pious  imbe- 
ciles probably  fancied  that,  in  reversing  the 
Hebraic  injunction  to  be  fruitful,  they  were 
obeying  heaven's  newer  laws. 

The  history  of  religion  is  depressing.  The 
vices  of  the  clergy  made  victims  of  their  con- 
fiding "spiritual  daughters".  In  the  ''holy" 
Eussia  of  yesterday,  we  saw  a  repetition  of  the 
fanatical  horrors  common  to  earlier  Christian 
times  all  over  southern  and  western  Europe. 
The  standard  of  morality  under  Christian  and 
Byzantine  influences  was  pushed  backward. 
Religious  bodies  were  filled  with  contention  and 
lost  to  decency.  As  society  became  more  and 
more  debased  by  superstition,  the  women  of  the 
poor,  as  usual,  suffered  most;  "the  tax  called 
'gold  of  affliction'  was  frequently  paid,  by  work- 
ing men,  with  the  price  of  the  bartered  honor 
of  their  daughters".  Fullom  records  that  "a 
Benedictine  friar,  whom  indolence  or  penury 
had  driven  to  the  cloister,  candidly  avowed  that 
'his  vow  of  poverty  had  given  him  a  hundred 
thousand  crowns  a  year,  and  his  vow  of  obedi- 


WOMAN   AND  RELIGION  85 

ence  raised  him  to  the  rank  of  a  sovereign 
prince'." 

At  the  time  of  Valentinian  it  was  necessary 
to  pass  laws  against  the  greed  of  priests  and 
the  rapacity  of  monks  who  preyed  upon  the 
conscience  and  who  fattened  on  the  property  of 
devout  women.  Damascus,  Bishop  of  Kome, 
and  even  St.  Jerome,  despite  his  horror  of 
"sex",  earned  the  nickname  of  "the  ladies' 
ear-scratchers".  After  that  nothing  could  add 
to  their  reputations. 

Naturally,  woman  was  the  chief  sufferer  from 
the  "lamentable  depravity"  and  the  "moral 
rottenness"  of  the  early  Christians.  "Women 
took  a  large  share  in  the  raging  controversies ' ' 
amongst  Trinitarians,  Arians,  and  Nestorians, 
"which,  like  most  religious  disputes,  termin- 
ated in  persecutions ;  and  Christians,  no  longer 
dreading  a  Nero  or  a  Domitian,  now  openly 
crucified  and  burnt  each  other.  The  naked 
bodies  of  maidens  and  noble  matrons  were,  by 
means  of  pulleys,  hoisted  in  the  air,  with  a 
weight  attached  to  their  feet ;  and  in  this  igno- 
minious posture,  their  tender  flesh  was  torn 
with  red-hot  pincers,  lashed  with  scourges,  and 
coated  with  plates  of  burning  iron.  Christian 
contending  with  Christian,  washed  the  broad 
streets  of  Borne  and  Constantinople  with 
Christian  blood;  and  in  a  sectarian  riot  at  Al- 
exandria, ferocity  ran  so  high  that  the  victors, 


86          WOMAN   FROM   BONDAGE   TO    FREEDOM 

after  perpetrating  the  most  savage  butchery, 
positively  devoured  the  mangled  bodies  of  the 
slain.  What  a  terrible  realization  of  that  warn- 
ing prophecy — 'I  have  not  come  to  give  peace, 
but  a  sword'! 

''Among  the  many  victims  of  these  unhappy 
tumults  was  Hypatia,  a  maiden  not  more  dis- 
tinguished for  her  beauty  than  for  her  learning 
and  her  virtues.  Her  father  was  Theon,  the 
illustrious  mathematician,  who  had  early  init- 
iated his  daughter  in  the  mysteries  of  philoso- 
phy. The  classic  groves  of  Athens  and  the 
schools  of  Alexandria  equally  applauded  her 
attainments,  and  listened  to  the  pure  wisdom 
and  the  music  of  her  lips.  She  respectfully 
declined  the  tender  attentions  of  lovers;  but, 
raised  to  the  chair  of  Gamaliel,  suffered  youth 
and  age,  without  preference  or  favor,  to  sit 
indiscriminately  at  her  feet.  Her  fame  and 
increasing  popularity  ultimately  excited  the 
jealousy  of  St.  Cyril,  at  that  time  the  Bishop 
of  Alexandria,  and  her  friendship  for  his  an- 
tagonist, Orestes,  the  prefect  of  the  city,  en- 
tailed on  her  devoted  head  the  crushing  weight 
of  his  enmity.  In  her  way  through  the  city,  her 
chariot  was  surrounded  by  his  creatures, 
headed  by  a  crafty  and  savage  fanatic  named 
Peter  the  Eeader;  and  the  young  and  innocent 
woman  was  dragged  to  the  ground,  stripped 
of  her  garments,  paraded  naked  through  the 


WOMAN   AND   RELIGION  87 

streets,  and  then  torn  limb  from  limb  on  the 
steps  of  the  cathedral.  The  still  warm  flesh 
was  scraped  from  her  bones  with  oyster-shells, 
and  the  bleeding  fragments  thrown  into  a  fur- 
nace, so  that  not  an  atom  of  the  beautiful  virgin 
should  escape  destruction."1 

The  torture,  the  maiming,  and  the  murder  of 
of  Elgiva  by  Dunstan  illustrates  further, 
amongst  thousands  and  thousands  of  similar 
bloody  deeds,  the  diabolical  brutality  of  super- 
stition perpetrated  in  the  name  of  Christianity 
upon  women  in  the  earlier  centuries  of  our 
epoch.  Indeed,  religious  superstition  always 
has  contrived  to  rob,  to  pester,  to  deceive,  and 
to  degrade  women. 

There  is  reason  for  this,  as  for  everything 
else.  Through  tyranny  and  lack  of  opportunity, 
woman  had  become  weakened  as  a  social  unit; 
her  weakness  was  in  line  of  the  least  resistance ; 
and  she  fell  easy  prey  to  the  basest  of  human 
passions.  The  paganism  of  Rome  was  almost 
as  bad  as  the  early  Christian  religion.  The 
better  nature  of  woman  long  had  suffered  from 
the  nonsensical  cruelties  of  superstition.  She 
had  been  taught  to  search  the  entrails  of  fowls 
for  the  secrets  of  Fate ;  to  question  altar-flames 
for  omens  of  the  future.  Her  augurs  had  di- 
vided the  heavens  into  four  parts ;  if  a  flock  of 
birds  flew  across  one  of  the  celestial  quarters, 

'The  History  of  Woman  (S.  W.  Fullom). 


88          WOMAN    FROM   BONDAGE   TO    FREEDOM 

it  was  portentous  of  good  or  evil.  The  voice 
of  thunder,  the  gleam  of  lightning,  and  the  spill- 
ing of  salt  were  threatening  signs  that  filled  her 
heart  with  dread.  Juno  and  Vesta  were  favor- 
ite deities ;  if  sins  were  committed  against  them, 
those  sins  were  expiated  in  dungeons  on  "the 
Field  of  Wickedness".  The  Sibylline  prophe- 
sies were  taken  seriously ;  and  women  generally 
were  so  ignorant  that  they  believed  Fate  might 
hang  on  the  foot  put  forth  first  in  the  morning; 
that  good  or  bad  luck  lay  coiled  in  a  slipper. 

Eeligious  influence,  good  and  bad,  is  only  one 
factor  in  society;  the  influence  is  not  always 
consciously  corrupt;  the  worst  superstitious 
elements  in  religion  often  are  the  sincerest;  and 
all  the  elements  of  religion  are  inevitable,  for 
they  spring  spontaneously  from  the  imperfect 
human  mind,  not  as  divine  revelations  nor  even 
as  human  inventions,  but  as  natural  growths; 
and  it  is  fair  to  assume  therefore  that  religion 
neither  is  spiritually  nor  morally  perfect.  Good 
and  evil  elements  always  mingle  in  the  mind 
and  work  of  man — yet  mankind  lias  progressed. 
In  that  fact  lies  the  salvation  of  woman ;  in  that 
fact  is  rooted  her  intuition  which,  like  the  cel- 
lar-plant, is  heliotropic — it  turns  toward  the 
light.  Her  soul  ever  was  more  or  less  vaguely 
conscious  of  the  right  direction,  even  when  her 
eyes  were  blinded,  her  feet  beset  with  pitfalls, 


WOMAN   AND  BELIGION  89 

and  when  her  false  guides  were  luring  her  on 
to  darkness. 

Religion  is  personal  as  well  as  collective  in 
character;  therefore  it  is  variable  and  inde- 
finable. It  is  pure  and  noble,  gross  and  inde- 
cent, kind  or  cruel,  foolish  and  fantastic  accord- 
ing to  the  personality  of  the  believer.  Religious 
formulae  and  creeds  and  superstitious  propa- 
ganda with  its  dogmas,  orders,  ceremonies  and 
rituals,  its  churches  and  mob-clamor  are,  on  the 
contrary,  impersonal.  To  criticise  these  things 
is  very  different  from  scoffing  at  one's  inner- 
most faith,  the  factors  of  which  not  only  are 
hard  to  determine  by  another,  but  are  unknown 
to  one's  self.  But  the  outward  trappings  of 
faith,  the  camouflage  of  theology,  the  ethical 
reactions  in  society  caused  by  religious  organi- 
zations, are  public  characters,  as  it  were,  and 
as  such  they  are  open  to  criticism.  No  one  need 
feel  a  delicacy  in  discussing  them,  since  it  is 
plain  that  not  all  can  be  right — some  must  be 
better  than  others,  and  some  must  be  bad. 

The  conduct  of  religious  bodies  is  no  more 
sacred  than  that  of  political  bodies.  The 
crimes  committed  in  the  name  of  religion  lose 
none  of  their  guilt.  Armenians  massacred  by 
Turks  and  Kurds — Christians  slaughtered  by 
Mohammedans — is  a  horror  as  hideous  in  the 
name  of  religion  as  in  the  name  of  war.  The 
persecution  of  Jews  by  Christians  in  the  name 


90          WOMAN   FBOM   BONDAGE   TO   FREEDOM 

of  Christ  is  diabolical.  The  atrocities  inflicted 
on  Christian  Belgium  by  Christian  Germany 
stains  the  Teuton's  hand  as  red  as  the  Turk's, 
but  with  this  difference :  The  Teuton  outraged 
his  own  "holy  women" — despoiled  and  mur- 
dered his  own  "sisters  in  Christ";  while  the 
Mohammedan  hordes  perpetrated  their  name- 
less infamies  on  those  whom  they  believed  to  be 
the  imps  of  Satan.  Mercifully  call  these  things 
the  logical  crimes  of  a  state  of  war!  Then  we 
must  admit  that  savagery  still  is  more  powerful 
than  religion ;  and  we  must  concede  that  no  re- 
ligion thus  far  has  achieved  the  success  that  one 
might  reasonably  expect  of  a  divine  institution. 
The  inadequacy  of  religion  is  the  inadequacy 
of  human  nature.  The  hands  that  bind  up 
wounds,  that  soothe  the  dying,  that  feed  the  or- 
phan, belong  to  no  one  religion,  nor  essentially 
to  any,  but  rather  to  the  ethics  of  humanity, 
which  is  of  divine  tendency  rather  than  of  di- 
vine origin — its  source  is  human ;  its  destiny  is 
God. 

It  is  a  demonstrable  fact  that  woman  has 
fared  badly  under  our  own  religion.  Her  con- 
dition has  improved  not  because  of  it  but  de- 
spite it  shams,  its  shame,  and  its  blunders. 
Under  its  authority,  a  violation  of  the  mar- 
riage-vow is  punished  only  when  the  culprit 
chances  to  be  a  woman.  "Sins  against  purity" 
carry  severest  penance  when  the  sinner  happens 


WOMAN   AND  RELIGION  91 

to  be  female.  Usually  the  males  are  not  incon- 
venienced by  such  venal  infractions. 

Celibacy  imposed  by  the  Church  on  healthy 
human  beings  is  an  incentive  to  sexual  excesses ; 
these  excesses  produce  evil  that  naturally  re- 
acts on  women.  Concubinage  was  so  common 
among  the  priests  of  the  Middle  Ages  that  the 
Bishop  of  Constance  levied  a  concubine  tax  on 
his  clergy.  Kings  who  received  their  "  divine 
right' '  to  rule  from  the  Church,  and  the  spiritual 
and  temporal  gentry  made  up  of  knights  and 
nobles,  were  notorious  for  their  gluttony  and 
drunkenness  and  for  their  debaucheries  of  de- 
fenseless women. 

The  Christianity  of  the  Middle  Ages  or  that 
of  to-day  is  false,  because  they  are  not  alike. 
Mediaeval  Christianity,  inspired  by  the  Biblical 
command,  "Thou  shalt  not  suffer  a  witch  to 
live!"  had  a  lovely  time  hounding  innocent 
women  to  death.  Thousands  were  hunted  like 
wild  beasts,  and  they  were  less  mercifully 
treated  when  brought  to  bay.  Pope  Innocent 
VIII,  in  the  latter  part  of  the  fifteenth  century, 
was  not  pleased  with  the  weather.  Storms  and 
other  meterological  phenomena  terrified  his 
pious  soul.  He  therefore  issued  the  bull,  Sum- 
mis  Desiderantes,  which  caused  more  spilling  of 
blood  perhaps  than  any  other  document  ever  is- 
sued by  a  Pope,  which  is  saying  a  good  deal.  A 
manual  called  the  Witch  Hammer,  that  came  to 


92          WOMAN"   FEOM   BONDAGE   TO   FREEDOM 

be  revered  both  by  Catholics  and  Protestants, 
was  very  widely  used.  This  precious  handbook 
taught,  among  other  things,  the  subtle  art  of  de- 
tecting and  punishing  witches  guilty  of  disturb- 
ing the  elements.  Countless  women  were  tor- 
tured on  the  rack  until  they  ''confessed";  hun- 
dreds and  thousands  were  burned  at  the  stake 
or  murdered  on  the  scaffold.  During  several 
centuries,  women  were  tortured  and  slain  for 
the  theological  crime  of  exercising  Satanic  in- 
fluence over  the  weather.  The  Dominicans  first, 
and  later  the  Jesuits,  were  particularly  hot  on 
the  trail  of  the  witch.  These  sweet-souled  theo- 
logians not  only  persecuted  and  murdered  the 
witch,  but  they  confiscated  her  property  to  meet 
the  expense  and  to  cover  the  damage  done  to  the 
crops  by  her  sorcery.  As  a  delicious  morsel  of 
theological  discrimination  against  women,  the 
history  of  witchcraft  may  be  ruminated  by  those 
who  have  a  taste  for  such  tid-bits. 

Yet,  what  should  one  expect  of  benighted  be- 
ings having  so  little  intelligence  and  so  much 
superstition  that  they  relied  on  the  sounding  of 
Ave  Maria  to  stop  hail  storms?  What  of  those 
who  believed  that  Satan's  power  could  be  para- 
lyzed by  the  ringing  of  "consecrated  bells"; 
that  thunder  is  "  a  flaming  exhalation  set  in  mo- 
'  tion  by  evil  spirits,  and  hurled  downward  with  a 
great  crash  and  a  horrible  smell  of  sulphur"! 
What  should  one  think  of  mentality  low  enough 


WOMAN   AND   KELIGION  93 

to  believe  that  there  is  revealed  truth  in  the 
104th  Psalm:  "Who  maketh  his  angels  spirits, 
his  ministers  a  flaming  fire!"  Haply,  Chris- 
tians no  longer  rely  on  the  efficacy  of  ringing 
bells  to  "put  hellish  legions  to  flight" — they 
are  using  high  explosives  and  Marshals,  such 
as  Foch.  Let  us  hope  there  is  some  beneficent 
progress  even  in  superstition. 

As  late  as  the  time  of  Newton,  Father  Au- 
gustine de  Angeles  of  Rome  believed  that  "the 
surest  remedy",  to  use  his  own  words,  "against 
thunder  is  that  which  our  Holy  Mother  the 
Church  practices;  namely,  the  ringing  of  bells 
when  a  thunderbolt  impends;  thence  follows  a 
twofold  effect,  physical  and  moral — a  physical, 
because  the  sound  variously  disturbs  and  agi- 
tates the  air,  and  by  agitation  disperses  the  hot 
exhalations  and  dispells  the  thunder;  but  the 
moral  effect  is  more  certain,  because  by  the 
sound  the  faithful  are  stirred  to  pour  forth  their 
prayers,  by  which  they  win  from  God  the  turn- 
ing away  of  the  thunderbolt." 

All  through  the  darkened  Middle  Ages  there 
were  men  who  opposed,  as  much  as  they  dared 
to  oppse,  the  fiendish  and  idiotic  practices  of  the 
devout.  One  of  the  splendid  examples  of  the  en- 
lightened few  of  the  ninth  century  was  Ango- 
bard,  Archbishop  of  Lyons.  This  good  man  in 
his  work,  "Against  the  Absurd  Opinion  of  the 
Vulgar  Touching  Hail  and  Thunder"  ridiculed 


94          WOMAN   FKOM   BONDAGE  TO   FBEEDOM 

"the  tyranny  of  foolishness".  He  wrote: 
1 1  Things  are  believed  by  Christians  of  such  ab- 
surdity as  no  one  ever  could  aforetime  induce 
the  heathen  to  believe." 

Paracelsus,  in  the  sixteenth  century,  at  his 
peril  tried  to  explain  thunder  reasonably;  he 
likened  it  to  the  reverberation  of  cannon.  Pro- 
fessor Pomponatius  of  Padua  also  had  his 
"Doubts"  of  the  influence  of  devils  on  meteorol- 
ogy, but  he  was  careful  to  express  them  only  as 
a  "philosopher" — as  a  "Christian"  he  pro- 
fessed a  belief  in  all  the  teachings  of  the  Church, 
and  wisely  enough  thus  saved  his  skin. 

Poor  Agrippa  of  Nettesheim  was  not  so  diplo- 
matic. He  tried  hard  to  stem  the  tide  of  the 
persecution  of  women,  and  failed  pathetically. 
Driven  from  place  to  place,  he  was  pursued,  per- 
secuted, and  reviled.  The  blessed  Dominicans 
would  not  let  him  rest,  even  in  death.  They  not 
only  traduced  his  memory,  but  they  erected 
above  his  grave  one  of  the  most  malignant  epi- 
taphs ever  devised. 

The  depressing  influence  of  false  religion  on 
the  nature  of  woman  is  revealed  in  the  debauch- 
eries of  the  sacerdotal  Fathers.  In  1259,  Alex- 
ander IV  tried  to  disrupt  the  shameful  union  be- 
tween concubines  and  the  clergy.  Henry  III, 
Bishop  of  Liege,  was  such  a  fatherly  sort  of  man 
that  he  had  sixty-five  "natural"  children.  Wil- 
liam, Bishop-elect  of  Paderborn,  in  1410,  al- 


WOMAN   AND  BELIGIOET  95 

though  successful  in  reducing  such  powerful  en- 
emies as  the  Archbishop  of  Cologne  and  the 
Count  of  Cleves  by  fire  and  sword,  was  power- 
less against  the  dissolute  morals  of  his  own 
monks,  who  were  chiefly  engaged  in  the  corrupt- 
ing of  women.  The  successful  resistance  of  the 
Swiss  clergy,  in  1230,  against  the  civil  author- 
ities of  Zurich,  was  intrenched  in  the  sensible 
doctrine  of  the  priests,  as  shown  by  their  state- 
ment that  they  "were  flesh  and  blood,  unequal 
to  the  task  of  living  like  angels,  etc. ' > 

The  Council  of  Cologne,  in  1307,  tried  in  vain 
to  give  the  nuns  a  chance  to  live  virtuous  lives 
— to  protect  them  from  priestly  seduction. 
Conrad,  Bishop  of  Wurzburg,  in  1521,  tried  to 
reform  his  priests,  but  without  success.  In  his 
mandate  he  accused  them  of  habitual  "glut- 
tony, drunkenness,  gambling,  quarreling,  and 
lust".  Erasmus  felt  called  upon  to  admonish 
his  clergy  against  concubinage.  The  Abbot  of 
St.  Pelazo  de  Antealtaria  "was  proved  by  com- 
petent witnesses  to  have  no  less  than  seventy 
concubines".  King  Solomon's  example  was 
not  entirely  ignored  by  the  good  Fathers.  We 
read:  "The  old  and  wealthy  abbey  of  St.  Al- 
bans  was  little  more  than  a  den  of  prostitutes, 
with  whom  the  monks  lived  openly  and 
avowedly". 

The  crimes  and  vices  of  the  Borgias  are  com- 
monplace records  of  history.  The  Diet  of  Nur- 


96          WOMAN   FROM   BONDAGE   TO    FREEDOM 

emburg,  in  1522,  concerned  itself  with  the  evils 
of  ecclesiastical  jurisdiction,  chief  of  which  was 
the  clerical  immunity  of  the  gentlemen  who 
" night  and  day"  preyed  upon  "the  virtue  of 
the  wives  and  daughters  of  the  laity". 

At  one  time  the  sale  of  indulgences  in  lust  to 
ecclesiastics  was  an  established  order,  finally 
reduced  "to  the  form  of  an  annual  tax,  which 
in  most  dioceses  was  exacted  of  all  the  clergy 
without  exception,  so  that  when  those  who  per- 
chance lived  chastely,  demurred  to  the  pay- 
ment, they  were  told  that  the  bishop  must  have 
the  money,  and  that  after  it  was  handed  over 
they  might  take  their  choice — whether  to  keep 
concubines  or  not." 

John  van  Arkel,  Bishop  of  Utrecht,  in  1347, 
found  it  necessary  to  prohibit  men  from  ac- 
cess to  the  nunneries.  In  Spain  (1322)  and  in 
the  Swiss  Cantons,  priests  were  forced  by  the 
community  to  select  concubines  in  assuming 
charge  of  parishes,  in  order  that  the  wives  and 
daughters  of  the  people  should  be  safe  from 
despoilation.  The  Council  of  Constance  (1415), 
in  deposing  a  pope,  uncovered  every  crime 
imaginable  including  incest,  adultery,  defile- 
ment, etc. 

Of  the  Pontifical  Fathers  of  the  fifteenth  cen- 
tury, few  indeed  were  not  notorious  for  their 
"frailties".  Innocent  VIII  was  so  renowned 
for  his  method  of  increasing  the  population  of 


WOMAN   AND   RELIGION  97 

Eome  that  he  was  the  butt  of  the  wits  of  his 
day;  and  everybody  knows  that  Alexander  VI 
did  not  allow  his  predecessor's  good  work  to 
languish.  History  is  bulging  with  innumerable 
similar  instances  too  revolting  for  more  than 
passing  notice. 

Of  course,  there  always  were  honest  priests 
and  pure  nuns — thousands  of  self-sacrificing, 
tender  souls  who  were  ever  striving  against 
wickedness;  who  bravely  met,  if  powerless  to 
conquer,  the  immeasurable  difficulties  of  their 
times  which,  unfortunately,  the  superstition  of 
their  own  religion  but  multiplied  and  intensi- 
fied. To-day  it  is  an  exception  for  a  priest  to 
be  wickedly  designing  or  for  a  nun  to  be  impure. 
The  clergy  generally  are  honest  men  who  do  a 
deal  of  good;  but  it  is  childish  to  suppose  that 
they  know  any  more  about  the  hereafter  than  do 
those  whom  they  presume  to  enlighten.  It  is 
idle  to  blame  the  wicked  who  could  not  have 
been  good  if  they  had  tried.  It  is  generous  to 
praise  the  good  who  had  so  much  incentive  to 
be  bad.  And  it  is  but  honest  to  denounce  the 
false  religions  that  have  been  so  excessively  de- 
grading to  womanhood.  li  Custom",  says  Mrs. 
Mill,  "hardens  human  beings  to  any  kind  of 
degradations,  by  deadening  the  part  of  their 
nature  that  would  resist  it. ' ' 

Mean,  narrow,  and  brutal  as  the  Church  had 
been  in  its  treatment  of  woman,  the  Protestants 


98          WOMAN   FROM   BONDAGE   TO   FREEDOM 

immediately  after  the  Keformation  became 
worse,  if  that  were  possible.  Martin  Luther  was 
as  good  perhaps  as  he  could  be  in  the  circum- 
stances, and  no  doubt  he  was  much  better  than 
the  average  monk;  but  the  monkish  taint 
shows  itself  in  his  estimate  of  woman  in  a  let- 
ter to  Stif el :  ' '  Catherine,  my  dear  rib  salutes 
you.  She  is  quite  well,  thank  God:  gentle, 
obedient,  and  kind  in  all  things,  far  beyond  my 
hopes.  ..." 

The  spirit  of  puritanism  was  hateful  and  ma- 
licious. It  promulgated  a  vindictive,  a  relentless 
warfare  against  persons  rather  than  practices 
— against  females  rather  than  their  "faults". 
Eeligious  asceticism  blew  its  frosty  breath  over 
the  flowers  of  love,  seared  the  fresh  leaves,  and 
chilled  the  plant  to  its  roots — its  puritanical 
fruit  was  hard,  acrid,  and  gnarled. 

The  Puritans  were  as  full  of  hatred  as  they 
were  empty  of  humor.  Their  persecution  of 
the  "daughters  of  the  devil",  as  they  called 
prostitutes  and  the  unfortunate  sisters  who  had 
loved  not  wisely  but  too  well,  was  nothing  less 
than  fiendish  in  its  cruelty.  The  Puritans  seem 
to  have  had  no  notion  of  the  pathetic  fact  that 
a  perfectly  vrituous  woman  might  be  deceived, 
ruined,  and  abandoned  by  an  unscrupulous 
man.  The  chief  defect  in  puritanism  was  the 
lack  of  imagination — a  defect  which  in  the  crim- 
inal mind  makes  the  murderer. 


WOMAN   AND   EELIGION  99 

The  position  of  woman  was  seldom  worse 
than  under  Puritan  domination  at  the  height  of 
its  power,  which  measured  the  depth  of  its  neg- 
ative morality.  Woman  was  kept  at  the  most 
menial  of  work;  her  natural  impulses  were 
subdued  without  ruth.  Old  Mother  Nature 
rebelled;  the  result  was  illicit  relations  and 
illegitimate  children, — both  were  severely  stig- 
matized ;  yet  both  were  results  as  inevitable  as 
the  religious  intolerance  that  caused  them. 

The  drudgeries  imposed  on  married  women 
were  maddening  in  their  monotony,  wearisome 
and  killing  in  their  toil.  As  the  family  in- 
creased, mother  and  daughters  became  worse 
than  slaves.  Industries,  later  specialized  and 
differentiated,  were  carried  on  by  the  housewife 
in  the  home ;  she  was  baker,  weaver,  tailor,  bar- 
ber, bleacher,  spinner,  brewer,  soap-mater, 
butcher,  cook,  dairyist,  and  often  gardener  and 
fieldhand  besides.  In  addition,  as  a  matter  of 
course,  she  bore  children;  she  was  wet-nurse, 
day  nurse,  and  night  nurse;  she  was  druggist, 
washerwoman,  and  doctor.  She  was  a  victim 
of  caste ;  her  soul  was  kept  in  prison — her  body 
in  harness,  and  her  hands  in  the  meanest  of 
filth  for  her  men-folk  and  children.  To  her,  the 
theatre  was  the  "vestibule  of  perdition";  gossip 
was  her  newspaper;  the  Bible  was  the  only  form 
of  fiction  she  could  read  without  endangering 
her  immortal  soul ;  and  the  dull,  gloomy  church 


100       WOMAN"   FROM   BONDAGE   TO   FREEDOM 

was  her  only  place  of  amusement.  She  was  a 
poor  benighted  being — a  human  toad  under  the 
harrow  of  pious  imbecility. 

Puritanism  not  only  oppressed  woman  and 
discriminated  against  her,  but  it  robbed  her  of 
every  spontaneous  joy;  it  took  from  her  the 
few  annual  fete-days  which  her  slavery  had  in- 
herited from  the  Saturnalia.  The  mirth  of 
Carnival,  sanctioned  by  the  Catholics,  was 
strangled  by  the  Puritans.  This  same  puritan 
spirit,  although  somewhat  weakened,  still  lives 
in  the  English-speaking  countries ;  it  crops  out 
in  opposition  to  the  great  feminist  movement 
with  its  lofty  aims ;  it  appears  even  in  the  little 
eddies  of  the  movement  itself ;  it  is  seen  in  our 
antiquated  Sabbatical  observances,  in  our  oppo- 
sition to  divorce,  in  our  attitude  toward  the 
Hester  Prynnes  and  little  Pearls;  we  can  read 
it  between  the  lines  of  Thanksgiving  and  other 
foolish  proclamations  of  our  Presidents. 

The  attitude  of  false  religion  toward  the  na- 
ture of  woman  always  has  been  abominably 
ignorant  and  lamentably  unjust — ignorant  alike 
of  the  laws  of  psychology  and  of  biology — un- 
just in  setting  up  artificial  standards  that  rig- 
idly oppose  natural  laws.  In  sexual  relations, 
the  church  looks  upon  the  married  woman  as 
subject  to  the  husband :  she  is  supposed  to  be 
passionless  as  a  statue  and  passive  as  the  udder 


WOMAN   AND   RELIGION  101 

of  a  milch-cow — a  thing  to  be  used  and  manipu- 
lated. 

Peter  commanded  obedience  of  the  wife  to  the 
husband;  Paul  insisted  that  the  husband  was 
"the  head  of  the  wife",  that  "the  head  of  the 
woman  is  man",  which  probably  is  the  reason 
why  he  thought  woman  was  brainless. 

Xow  in  fact  there  is  no  natural,  no  ethical,  nor 
any  other  reason  wrhy  man  should  dominate 
woman  in  any  of  their  social,  political,  or  inti- 
mate relations.  The  nature  of  the  normal  wom- 
an is  no  more  devoid  of  passion  than  is  that 
of  the  normal  man.  Indeed,  natural  men  and 
women  are  sexually  complementary  both  in 
need  and  desire ;  and  when  unified  by  love,  they 
are  wholly  co-ordinate  and  equally  necessary, 
one  to  the  other.  This  is  true  not  only  as  to 
the  noblest  state  of  their  own  souls  and  as  to 
the  best  condition  of  their  own  bodies,  but  also 
as  to  the  wellbeing  of  the  most  fundamental  in- 
stinct of  the  race.  "Whenever  artificial  moon- 
shine has  interfered  with  the  orderly  climax  of 
sexual  emotion,  the  result  has  been  disastrous. 
It  makes  no  difference  whether  a  saint  obstructs 
natural  law  or  whether  the  same  thing  is  ef- 
fected through  ignorant  commands  put  into  the 
mouth  of  a  god — so  far  as  nature  is  concerned, 
the  result  is  the  same. 

The  indecent  sexual  extravagances  of  me- 
diaeval times  were  closely  related  to  earlier 


102       WOMAN   FROM   BONDAGE   TO   FREEDOM 

mysticism  and  to  the  ascetism  of  Christianity. 
Commonsense,  it  is  true,  was  a  factor,  inasmuch 
as  it  perceived  the  need  of  acceding  to  natural 
demands;  but  the  pressure  of  artificial  man- 
dates of  the  church  was  too  much  for  healthy 
human  nature — it  turned  out  badly.  Common- 
sense  under  high  pressure  overflowed,  it  was 
transmuted  into  sensuality,  and  sensuality 
readily  turned  into  vice,  and  vice  into  disease. 

The  rise  of  the  Christian  priests  to  domina- 
tion over  the  private  affairs  of  women  was 
slow  and  subtle,  and  its  end  is  not  yet.  In  ec- 
clesiastical doctrine,  the  sexual  instinct  is  sin- 
ful; but  as  it  could  not  be  uprooted,  a  sacra- 
mental license  was  issued  whereby  it  might  at 
least  be  regulated,  "analogous  to  a  license  to 
sell  intoxicating  liquors  ".  Theology  regarded 
sexual  enjoyment  as  impure,  but  the  Church 
assumed  the  authority  to  purify  it  in  exchange 
for  power  and  pence.  Thus  to  the  Church  is 
owing  the  development  of  the  conception  of  mar- 
riage as  a  religious  sacrament. 

When  most  of  the  differences  between  Ca- 
tholicism and  Protestantism  shall  have  been 
shaken  down  and  blown  as  dust  away  by  the 
winds  of  time,  one  thing  will  remain  to  the  glory 
of  Martin  Luther, — and  that  is  his  perception 
and  acknowledgment  of  the  needs  of  human  love 
in  human  society.  This  sometime-monk,  with 
all  his  belief  in  demons,  with  all  his  insane 


WOMAN   AND  RELIGION  103 

moods  and  childish  fancies  and  grotesque  and 
primitive  notions,  nevertheless  had  sense 
enough  to  see  the  folly  of  celibacy  among  per- 
sons healthy  of  body  and  mind.  Among  all  the 
many  utterances  of  this  sturdy  reformer,  the 
one  that  will  be  remembered  longest  for  its 
wisdom  is  this:  "A  woman,  unless  she  be  pe- 
culiarly sanctified  from  above,  can  as  little  dis- 
pense with  a  man,  as  with  eating,  sleeping, 
drinking,  or  the  fulfillment  of  any  other  phys- 
ical need.  Neither  can  a  man  dispense  with  a 
woman.  The  reason  is  this :  it  is  as  deeply  im- 
planted in  our  nature  to  beget  children  as  to 
eat  and  drink.  Therefore  has  God  given  the 
body  members,  veins,  fluids,  and  everything 
that  is  necessary  for  these  purposes.  He  who 
seeks  to  restrain  them,  and  will  not  let  Nature 
alone,  what  does  he  else  but  seek  to  restrain 
Nature  from  being  Nature;  fire  from  burning; 
water  from  wetting;  and  man  from  eating, 
drinking,  or  sleeping?" 

It  is  suspected  by  some  thinkers  that  the  god 
of  this  litle  world  is  still  a  foetus  in  the  throb- 
bing womb  of  humanity;  that  our  race  may  re- 
main an  expectant  mother  for  millions  of 
years ;  and  that  other  millions  of  years  may  be 
required  for  the  growth  of  this  god  into  a  full- 
fledged  minor  deity.  And  then  the  chances  are 
even  that  this  divinity  gestating  within  our 
souls  will  be  female.  So  many  of  the  male  gods 


104       'WOMAN   FBOM   BONDAGE   TO   FREEDOM 

have  been  failures,  a  female  deity  may  save  the 
race  at  last  from  the  false  elements  of  religion. 
But  for  the  present  we  shall  get  on  if 

"We  walk  according  to  our  light, 

Pursue  the  path 
That  leads  to  honor's  stainless  height, 

Careless  of  wrath 
Or  curse  of  God  or  priestly  spite, 
Longing  to  know  and  do  the  right. 

"We  love  our  fellowman,  our  kind, 

"Wife,  child,  and  friend. 
To  phantoms  we  are  deaf  and  blind ; 

But  we  extend 

The  helping  hand  to  the  distressed; 
By  lifting  others  we  are  blessed." 

• — Ingersoll, 


WOMAN  AND  THE  LAW 

Long  is  the  way 
And  hard,  that  out  of  hell  leads  up  to  light. 

— Milton. 

OMAN'S  subordinate  position  before 
the  law  is  more  ancient  than  history. 
Her  legal  status  was  modified  by 
religion.  Law  and  religion  have  been 
interwoven  so  long  that  the  one  can  hardly  be 
discussed  without  dragging  in  the  other. 

Primitive  usage  was  the  first  law;  and  out 
of  it  the  fixed  tribal  customs  developed  into 
what  is  known  as  personal  rights.  Later  laws 
laid  down  by  the  headmen  were  founded  on 
these  rights.  From  primitive  simplicity  to  civ- 
ilized complexity,  the  principle  of  natural  rights 
has  persisted,  at  least  in  theory,  in  the  formula- 
tion of  human  law. 

Then  confusion  arose  as  temporal  and  spir- 
itual authorities  tried  to  co-ordinate  their  rules 
of  governance.  This  confusion  gave  rise  to 
continual  conflict  which  imposed  many  hard- 
ships on  society.  Certain  classes  suffered  from 
the  inequalities  of  justice  meted  out  to  them, 
just  as  other  classes  of  individuals  were  bene- 

105 


106       WOMAN   FBOM   BONDAGE   TO   FREEDOM 

fited.  The  favored  few  always  have  triumphed 
over  the  impersonal  masses.  Justice,  most  ar- 
dently desired,  has  ever  been  most  difficult  to 
attain;  and  the  burdens  of  injustice  have 
pressed  heavily  on  woman  from  time  imme- 
morial. 

"Those  thousand  decencies  that  daily  flow 
From  all  her  words  and  actions" 

made  little  impression  on  the  statutes  enacted 
by  man.  Her  standing  in  law  through  the  ages, 
naturally,  has  not  been  uniform.  Periods  of 
hope  and  despair  have  followed  one  another. 
But  when  viewed  broadly,  her  legal  rights  have 
advanced  steadily  until  now  they  approximate 
those  of  men,  and  in  some  respects  go  beyond. 
Beginning  with  the  Mosaic  laws — for  one 
must  start  somewhere — it  is  evident  from  many 
known  facts  that  these  laws  were  built  largely 
on  precedent.  The  codes  of  Babylon  were  cen- 
turies old  at  the  time  of  Moses  and  Aaron.  Peo- 
ples contemporary  with  the  Israelites  lived 
under  laws  similar  to  theirs ;  while  many  forms 
of  legal  procedure  that  are  commonly  called 
Mosaic,  probably  are  post-Mosaic.  However, 
the  fact  to  be  kept  in  mind  is  that  woman's 
status  under  the  Mosaic  laws  is  generally  indi- 
cative of  her  standing  for  many  centuries  among 
some  of  the  most  enlightened  peoples  of  the 
world. 


WOMAN   AND   THE  LAW  107 

We  read  in  the  twenty-fourth  chapter  of 
Deuteronomy  that  the  right  of  divorce  was 
vested  in  the  whim  of  the  husband:  ".  .  . 
let  him  write  her  a  bill  of  divorcement,  and 
give  it  in  her  hand,  and  send  her  out  of  his 
house".  The  injustice  of  such  early  laws  is 
everywhere  apparent.  In  the  thirtieth  chapter 
of  Numbers  it  is  recorded  that  a  woman  could 
not  make  a  vow  binding  her  own  soul  without 
the  consent  of  her  father  or  her  husband.  Man's 
dominance  over  woman  is  exhibited  in  the  rec- 
ord of  her  legal  inability  to  inherit  property 
if  she  had  brothers;  and  even  in  their  stead, 
she  could  inherit  only  if  she  married  in  the 
tribe,  for  if  she  "be  married  to  any  of  the 
sons  of  the  other  tribes  of  the  children  *>f  Israel, 
then  shall"  said  heritage  be  taken  away  fron? 
her  and  given  over  to  the  tribe. 

The  position  of  woman  in  society  is  mir- 
rored by  her  standing  before  the  law.  Her 
social  degradation  could  not  be  illustrated  bet- 
ter than  it  is  in  the  "law  of  jealousies",  fifth 
chapter  of  Numbers.  According  to  this  in- 
iquitous law,  which  many  thousands  of  human 
beings  believe  was  given  to  Moses  by  the  Lord, 
any  old  jackal,  in  a  fit  of  impotent  or  jealous 
aberration,  might  hale  his  wife  to  court:  the 
judge  in  the  case  being  a  priest  and  the  court- 
room a  filthy  tabernacle ;  there  she  was  put  to 
the  test  of  the  "bitter  water".  If  the  bitter 


108       WOMAN   FKOM   BONDAGE   TO   FREEDOM 

water  made  her  ill,  it  was  proof  of  her  guilt: 
"and  her  belly  shall  swell  and  her  thigh  shall 
rot:  and  the  woman  shall  be  a  curse  among 
her  people".  If  she  escaped  poisoning,  she 
was  adjudged  innocent  for  the  time  being,  or 
until  her  husband  had  another  attack  of  the 
grouch.  Her  chances  of  escape  however  were 
slim  since  the  heaven-sent  formula  for  the  bit- 
ter water  reads  in  part:  "And  the  priest  shall 
take  holy  water  in  an  earthen  vessel;  and  the 
dust  that  is  in  the  floor  of  the  tabernacle  the 
priest  shall  take,  and  put  it  into  the  water. 
.  .  .  And  he  shall  cause  the  woman  to  drink 
of  the  bitter  water  that  causeth  the  curse,  it 
shall  enter  into  her,  and  become  bitter". 

The  idea  of  testing  the  fidelity  of  a  wife  by 
forcing  her  to  swallow  the  germs  of  cholera 
or  of  typhoid  fever  may  have  been  original  in 
its  time,  and  the  test  effective ;  but  that  kind  of 
procedure  has  lost  is  appeal.  The  germ-test 
for  morals  has  become  unpopular,  and  the  pub- 
lic health  has  improved.  As  one  reflects  on 
the  virulency  of  germs  bred  in  the  festering 
Orient  during  those  unhygienic  times,  it  is  not 
surprising  that  the  water,  muddied  with  the 
dust  from  the  floor  of  the  tabernacle,  was  in- 
deed "bitter". 

Not  only  was  woman  subordinate  before  the 
law,  she  was  unclean  before  her  master.  The 
Mosaic  decree  that  the  menstruating  woman 


WOMAN   AND   THE   LAW  109 

should  be  regarded  as  unclean,  had  its  point- 
of-view;  but  it  is  abominable  that  "she  shall  be 
put  apart  seven  days ;  and  whoever  toucheth  her 
shall  be  unclean  until  the  even".  Legally,  the 
parturient  mother  of  a  "maid  child"  was  twice 
as  dirty  as  the  mother  of  a  "man  child".  For 
the  law  laid  down  in  the  twelfth  chapter  of 
Leviticus  reads:  "If  a  woman  have  .  .  .  born 
a  man  child:  then  she  shall  be  unclean  seven 
days.  .  .  .  And  she  shall  then  continue  in  the 
blood  of  her  purifying  three  and  thirty  days; 
she  shall  touch  no  hallowed  thing,  nor  come  into 
the  sanctuary,  until  the  days  of  her  purifying 
be  fulfilled  But  if  she  bear  a  maid  child,  then 
she  shall  be  unclean  two  weeks  .  .  .  and  she 
shall  continue  in  the  blood  of  her  purifying 
three  score  and  six  days". 

The  intent  of  this  law  probably  was  hy- 
gienic; but  its  letter  was  cruel  and  degrading, 
and  its  suggestiveness  was  not  flattering  to 
womanhood.  Such  laws,  especially  those  of 
sacred  origin,  have  caused  inestimable  harm 
to  society;  for  they  not  only  have  lent  color 
to  the  primitive  taboo,  but  they  have  encour- 
aged man's  brutality  to  woman,  inevitably  hurt- 
ing both  oppressor  and  oppressed. 

At  the  time  of  Abraham,  the  position  of 
woman  virtually  was  that  of  servitude.  The 
patriarchs  had  slight  respect  for  matrimony, 
to  which  state  the  ties  of  blood  were  of  little 


110       -WOMAN"   FROM   BONDAGE   TO   FREEDOM 

hindrance.  Moral  degradation,  ever  synchro- 
nous with  legal  injustice,  is  plain  in  the  attitude 
of  Sarah  and  in  the  conduct  of  Leah  and 
Rachel.  In  the  household  of  Abraham,  the 
" bondwoman"  was  sanctioned  by  righteous 
laws.  Suffering  the  final  indignity,  she  was 
made  to  feel  the  last  stroke  of  cruelty  as  she 
was  driven  forth  from  the  tent,  destitute  and 
friendless,  to  wander  in  the  world  or  to  perish 
with  her  child  in  the  desert.  Nothing  can  be 
much  more  revolting  to  our  sense  of  justice 
than  the  legal-religious  standing  of  women  dur- 
ing those  pastoral  times.  Exposed  to  the  ter- 
rors of  kidnaping,  struggling  under  the  bur- 
dens and  the  vices  of  slavery,  violated  and 
scorned,  they  knew  no  security  and  they  had  no 
redress. 

According  to  Deuteronomy,  when  the  legis- 
lative body  of  a  semi-barbaric  state  sat  in 
heaven,  the  bride  not  possessed  of  the  "tokens 
of  virginity"  was  put  to  death:  "and  the  men 
of  the  city  shall  stone  her  with  stones,  that  she 
die".  The  instrument  that  despoiled  her  of 
her  tokens  was  the  one  chosen  to  be  the  death 
of  her  for  having  lost  them.  The  robber  is 
commanded  to  punish  his  victim.  Nothing 
could  be  more  ingenious. 

There  are  countless  illustrations  of  the  sub- 
ordination of  woman  before  the  law  scattered 
through  history,  sacred  literature,  and  art. 


WOMAN  AND  THE  LAW  111 

Almost  everywhere,  and  nearly  at  all  times, 
she  has  been  forced  to  be  unchaste  and  then 
was  punished  for  the  offense.  She  was  re- 
strained from  marriage,  and  thrust  into  mar- 
riage against  her  will.  Eeligious  legislation  has 
denied  her  right  to  a  second  marriage  at  one 
time,  and  at  another  it  forced  her  into  a  union 
with  the  brother  of  her  dear  departed.  Dur- 
ing many  centuries,  religious  and  secular  laws 
have  been  to  woman,  as  it  were,  the  devil  and 
the  deep  sea — there  was  little  choice  between 
them. 

The  history  of  woman  under  the  administra- 
tion of  heaven-made  laws  is  a  record  of  her  ser- 
vitude and  humility :  Euth  at  the  feet  of  Boaz ; 
Jezebel  "trod  under  foot"  by  Jehu;  the  Shu- 
nammite  " handmaid"  to  Elisha,  "the  man  of 
God"!  These  examples  may  be  multiplied  in- 
definitely. Even  in  Job's  modest  protestations 
of  his  integrity,  it  is  suggested  that  a  woman's 
deceit  is  worse  than  a  man's;  and  he  is  mod- 
erately horrified  at  the  thought  lest  his  "heart 
have  been  deceived  by  a  woman".  But  Job 
also  had  sane  and  tender  moods;  his  spiritual 
sufferings  show  that  he  was  aware  of  the 
wrongs  endured  by  women,  for  he  refers  to  his 
honorable  conduct  toward  their  sex.  This  was 
an  exceptional  prince — an  extraordinary  char- 
acter of  his  day;  and  in  nothing  did  his  great- 


112       WOMAN   FROM   BONDAGE   TO   FREEDOM 

ness  of  soul  shine  forth  more  clearly  than  in  his 
better  demeanor  toward  women. 

In  the  Eastern  countries,  woman's  depend- 
ence has  been  deplorable  for  ages.  The  inher- 
itance of  property  was  mostly  restricted  to  the 
male  line.  When  woman  was  permitted  to  ac- 
quire wealth,  either  before  or  after  marriage, 
her  property  reverted  at  the  death  of  her  hus- 
band to  the  male  members  of  one  or  the  other 
family.  For  before  the  suttee  was  abolished 
by  the  English,  it  was  customary  for  the  Hindu 
widow  to  be  burned  alive  on  her  husband's 
funeral  pyre.  As  a  great  many  old  men  had 
very  young  wives,  this  practice  was  appalling. 

Woman  had  no  standing  in  Hindu  law;  and 
her  status  was  little  better  under  the  early 
Roman  law,  when  her  property-rights  were 
vested  in  her  husband.  If  she  was  unmarried, 
and  not  a  vestal  virgin,  then  her  father  or  kins- 
man, or  some  other  male  person  adopted  by  her 
family,  held  possession  of  her  estate.  Having 
no  male  relatives  under  the  law,  her  wealth  went 
to  the  clan  or  gens.  In  marriage  she  was  sold 
almost  as  a  slave.  Not  qualified  to  hold  office, 
she  was  legally  an  imbecile.  As  she  had  no 
standing  in  court,  she  was  unable  to  enter  into  a 
legal  contract;  nor  could  she  appear  as  a  wit- 
ness. The  few  privileges  granted  to  her  were 
given  in  the  spirit  of  pity. 

Among  the  meagre  crumbs  that  the  law  cast 


WOMAN  AND  THE  LAW  113 

at  her  feet,  was  the  right  to  accuse  witches. 
This  was  only  a  theatrical  step  toward  civiliza- 
tion. The  right  of  one  woman  to  hale  another 
to  court  as  a  witch  is  quite  on  an  ethical  level 
of  granting  two  cats  the  right  to  have  their 
tails  tied  together  and  be  suspended  from  a 
clothes-line.  Woman  was  legislated  against  on 
almost  every  occasion.  If  she  mourned  too 
much  for  her  dead,  a  repressive  law  forthwith 
was  enacted.  She  could  make  her  will  only 
under  the  supervision  of  some  male.  In  ancient 
times,  her  father  or  husband  sitting  in  family 
council  had  the  legal  right  to  put  her  to  death 
without  a  public  trial.  Eoman  law  regarded 
her  character  as  "  unsteady ",  and  it  was  re- 
ferred to  as  "the  weakness  of  the  sex". 

During  the  second  century  B.C.,  some 
changes  favoring  women  began  to  appear  in 
the  statutes;  and  from  the  time  of  Augustus 
to  that  of  Justinian,  more  or  less  steady  prog- 
ress was  made.  Woman  became  independent  or 
sui  juris,  first,  if  she  were  the  mother  of  three 
children — an  extra  child  being  required  of  the 
f reed-woman ;  second,  if  she  were  a  vestal  vir- 
gin; but  as  there  were  only  a  half-dozen  of 
these,  the  opportunity  was  narrow;  third,  by 
a  special  act,  of  infrequent  occurrence,  which 
granted  her  independence  with  restrictions. 
The  restrictions  usually  nullified  the  grant ;  and 
at  best  her  legal  independence  was  more  in 


114       WOMAN"   FROM   BONDAGE   TO   FREEDOM 

name  than  in  fact;  even  her  power  oyer  her 
children  was  exercised  through  an  agnate,  or 
guardian. 

Despite  all  the  harshness  of  early  law  how- 
ever, woman  was  greatly  respected  in  her  own 
home  during  the  best  period  of  Roman  civiliza- 
tion. Her  influence  in  the  family  gradually 
extended  to  the  political  sphere,  where  it 
reached  its  culmination  during  the  first  three 
centuries  of  this  era.  And  although  the  po- 
litical power  of  such  women  as  Agrippina  and 
Livia,  unusually  strong  characters,  may  not  be 
regarded  as  typical,  nevertheless  it  indicates 
what  was  possible  to  the  sex  in  the  circum- 
stances. 

In  the  early  period  of  the  Republic,  women 
were  severely  punished  for  wine  drinking;  and 
according  to  Valerius  Maximus,  wives  who 
tippled  "the  sweet  poison  of  misused  wine" 
were  now  and  then  beaten  to  death  by  their  hus- 
bands. But  at  the  same  time,  gluttony,  drunk- 
enness, and  adultery  among  the  men  were  glozed 
over.  There  was  however  a  distinction  made 
between  the  status  of  women  before  the  law 
and  their  standing  in  society. 

The  high  regard  of  Marcus  Aurelius  for  the 
teachings  of  his  mother,  and  the  affection  of 
men  like  Pliny  and  Quintilian  for  their  wives, 
were  far  from  being  sporadic  examples  of  Ro- 
man sentiment.  Some  of  the  best  historians 


WOMAN   AND   THE   LAW  115 

believe  that  the  majority  of  the  better  condi- 
tioned Romans  was  duly  appreciative  of  the 
nobility  of  character  then,  as  before  and  since, 
widely  borne  by  women.  Gradually  the  hard 
and  repressive  statutes  were  softened  and  re- 
laxed until  in  actual  effect  they  lapsed  into 
dead-letter  laws. 

In  ancient  Roman  times,  marriage  was  pos- 
sible in  three  ways:  first,  by  a  mock  sale  of 
the  woman;  second,  by  solemn  rites  considered 
sacred,  which  permitted  the  issue  to  qualify 
for  the  priesthood;  third,  by  a  common-law 
method  that  made  the  marriage  legal  after  the 
couple  had  lived  together  for  a  year  under  cer- 
tain prescriptive  rules.  These  three  forms  of 
marriage  persisted  until  about  the  second  cen- 
tury, A.  D. 

Marriage  by  proxy  was  allowed  later,  and 
usually  it  was  arranged  by  the  woman's  par- 
ents or  guardian.  Slowly  the  authority  of 
father  over  daughter  became  weakened  until 
the  daughter's  consent  was  essential  to  the  mar- 
riage contract.  Sons  however  could  not  be 
forced  into  marriage  against  their  will,  although 
the  father's  consent  was  necessary  to  the  val- 
idity of  the  daughter's  marriage. 

In  time,  Roman  marriage  developed  into  a 
civil  contract  founded  on  consent  and  denned 
by  law  as  "the  union  of  a  man  and  a  woman, 
and  a  partnership  of  all  life ;  a  mutual  sharing 


116       WOMAN   FROM   BONDAGE   TO   FREEDOM 

of  laws  human  and  divine".  The  real  status 
of  the  wife  however  was  that  of  a  daughter, 
since  the  husband  held  her  in  manu.  The  widow 
was  compelled  by  law  to  wear  for  ten  months 
the  external  signs  of  mourning,  and  to  refrain 
in  public  from  certain  social  diversions  for  the 
same  period.  The  widower,  on  the  contrary, 
was  free  to  mourn  or  not,  externally  and  intern- 
ally. These  laws  were  in  force  until  they  were 
remitted  by  Gordian,  the  youngest,  in  238,  A.  D. 

From  absolute  power  over  his  wife,  the  hus- 
band's authority  diminished  during  the  first 
three  centuries  of  our  era  until  his  domina- 
tion was  in  name  rather  than  in  fact.  The  wife's 
control  of  her  private  property  was  one  of 
woman's  victories  achieved  under  the  Roman 
law.  This  is  referred  to  in  some  of  the  Com- 
edies of  both  Terence  and  Plautus.  The  state 
wisely  conserved  its  own  welfare  by  guarding 
and  keeping  inviolate  the  doweries  of  women. 
Gradually  also  the  penalties  of  adultery  grew 
lighter,  until  husbands  became  rather  compla- 
cent. 

During  the  Empire,  as  society  grew  lax  in 
morals,  the  grounds  for  divorce  became  more 
and  more  trivial,  although  the  initiative  rested 
too  long  with  the  husband.  Cicero  could  di- 
vorce Terentia  for  a  richer  and  younger  woman. 
But  in  time,  woman  also  acquired  rights  to  in- 
itiative in  divorce  which  became  easier  and 


WOMAN   AND   THE   LAW  117 

more  frequent,  especially  in  the  better  circles  of 
society.  Univira  became  so  rare  that  the  des- 
ignation was  engraved  on  her  tomb.  Theselina, 
according  to  Martial,  married  ten  times  in 
thirty  days,  and  thus  established  a  record  that 
hardly  has  been  equalled  by  the  most  enterpris- 
ing stage-folk  of  to-day.  The  only  form  of 
marriage  legally  indissoluble  was  that  of  con- 
farreatio,  because  the  priests  of  Jupiter  were 
recruited  from  its  issue. 

Roman  law  in  its  flower  permitted  women  to 
engage  in  business  pursuits  such  as  the  retail 
trade,  the  keeping  of  hostelries,  barbering,  the 
running  of  vaudeville,  the  practice  of  medicine, 
and  so  forward.  The  powers  of  the  guardian 
had  diminished;  and  woman's  standing  in  the 
law  courts  had  become  well  recognized.  In  fact, 
women  were  so  successful  as  pleaders  that,  ac- 
cording to  Juvenal,  it  was  difficult  for  men  law- 
yers to  stand  against  them ;  and  finally  the  pen- 
dulum swung  toward  a  partiality  for  women 
litigants.  With  the  rapid  advance  of  women's 
rights  before  the  law,  arose  their  many  facili- 
ties for  acquiring  an  education,  which  were 
later  abolished  under  Christian  rule.  Yet  with 
all  the  benefits  received  by  women  from  the 
Roman  law,  there  was  no  definite  provision 
made  for  the  public  education  of  girls  as  for 
that  of  boys. 

At  the  time  of  Justinian,  women  could  be- 


118       WOMAZST   FROM   BONDAGE   TO   FREEDOM 

queath  and  make  legal  contracts.  Indeed,  sev- 
eral of  the  Christian  emperors  were  kindly  dis- 
posed toward  a  greater  freedom  for  the  sex. 
Slight  improvements  were  made  on  the  pagan 
laws  so  that,  for  instance,  mothers  no  longer 
were  dependent  on  their  sons  for  the  simplest 
acts  of  justice.  In  many  ways,  Justinian 
showed  his  taste  for  civilization ;  above  all  else 
by  his  imperial  championship  of  woman's 
cause  and  by  his  charitable  disposition  toward 
her  "frailties".  He  softened  the  Constantine 
penalty  of  death  for  adultery  to  imprisonment 
in  a  convent.  It  is  questionable  which  punish- 
ment was  preferable  at  that  time;  but  the  em- 
peror's intentions  were  good.  He  was  a  trifle 
severe  with  the  Jews;  but  that  has  been  con- 
doned by  Christians  on  the  grounds  of  his  re- 
ligious fervor.  If,  for  example,  a  Christian 
woman  married  a  Jew,  both  were  held  to  be 
adulterous — but  the  Jew  never  was  purposely 
confined  in  a  convent  for  punishment. 

Many  good  laws  were  promulgated  by  this 
worthy  emperor  for  the  benefit  of  working- 
women  and  others ;  but  the  old  notion  of  wom- 
an's  "natural  inferiority"  lurked  in  the  minds 
of  the  most  Christian  of  rulers.  The  canon 
law  upheld  the  husband 's  supremacy  and  power 
over  the  wrife,  and  it  introduced  several  nov- 
elties to  the  Eoman  law :  A  priestly  benediction 
was  necessary  to  make  the  marriage  ceremony 


WOMAN   AND   THE  LAW  119 

valid;  women  were  not  allowed  to  " desecrate " 
the  church  by  holding  any  public  office  under 
it ;  nor  were  they  permitted  to  come  within  cer- 
tain fixed  limits  of  the  altar;  and  having  " pro- 
fessed religion,  they  could  not  be  forced  to 
give  testimony  as  witnesses".  Of  course  this 
was  no  favor  to  their  sex,  since  it  tempted  them 
to  compound  with  crime. 

In  the  northern  regions  of  Europe,  early  laws 
differed  according  to  locality,  and  some  were 
much  more  liberal  toward  woman  than  they  be- 
came later.  Sometimes  inheritance  was  through 
individuals ;  again,  it  was  through  classes,  when 
there  chanced  to  be  no  male  heirs.  The  Scan- 
dinavian women  were  under  a  rigid  guardian- 
ship; even  as  late  as  the  latter  part  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  a  woman  could  not  marry 
without  the  consent  of  her  male  " tutor";  if  she 
did,  her  tutor  was  empowered  to  administer  her 
estate  for  life,  and  to  pay  himself  a  salary  for 
his  services. 

In  England,  before  the  Conquest,  a  woman 
was  punished  for  adultery  by  having  her  nose 
and  ears  cut  off;  female  slaves  were  burned 
alive  for  petty  thefts;  penalties  for  witchcraft 
were  brutally  severe,  whilst  only  a  mild  pen- 
ance was  exacted  for  the  beating  of  a  slave- 
girl  to  death.  In  the  time  of  Ethelbert,  wives 
were  bought  and  stolen ;  but  it  was  provided  by 
law  that  if  a  freeman  stole  the  wife  of  an- 


120       "WOMAN   FROM   BONDAGE  TO   FREEDOM 

other,  the  thief  must  procure  at  his  own  ex- 
pense a  new  wife  for  the  injured  husband. 

Under  the  old  common  and  statute  laws,  wom- 
an's position  differed  materially  from  man's, 
and  she  was  not  permitted  to  forget  her  in- 
ferior station.  She  could  not  testify  in  court 
in  certain  cases,  either  for  or  against  a  man. 
She  was  allowed  neither  to  appoint  a  testa- 
mentary guardian  nor  to  act  as  one  with  full 
powers  over  her  own  children.  Magna  Charta 
treated  her  niggardly.  She  was  legally  burned 
for  witchcraft  and  treason — and  that  no  longer 
ago  than  in  the  latter  part  of  the  eighteenth 
century.  Women  also  were  the  victims  of 
sumptuary  measures  in  matters  of  style  and 
dress  and  the  materials  of  dress,  as  well.  In 
a  word,  they  were  treated  in  general  as  chil- 
dren before  the  law. 

"Woman  gained  much  from  marriage  in  later 
primitive  times,  and  she  lost  much  by  mar- 
riage under  the  law  in  still  later  times.  For  all 
her  gains,  she  was  compelled  to  bear  endless 
burdens  as  concomitant  results.  From  the 
dawn  of  history  to  feudal  times,  and  down  to 
the  present  day  for  that  matter,  marriage  has 
thrust  upon  her  many  onerous  evils. 

Under  the  common  law  of  England,  mar- 
riage despoils  woman  of  her  legal  existence 
which  however  the  law  is  gracious  enough  to 
grant  on  special  occasions  when  it  is  deemed 


WOMAN   AND   THE   LAW  121 

desirable  to  punish  her  for  some  misdemeanor. 
According  to  Blackstone:  "By  marriage  the 
husband  and  wife  are  one  person  in  the  law; 
that  is,  the  very  being  or  legal  existence  of 
the  woman  is  suspended  during  marriage,  or 
at  least  is  incorporated  or  consolidated  into 
that  of  the  husband,  under  whose  wing,  pro- 
tection and  cover,  she  performs  everything;  and 
is  therefore  called  in  our  law-French  a  femme 
covert". 

Agreeable  to  this  form  of  "crystallized  jus- 
tice", the  wife  loses  her  body,  her  civil  repu- 
tation, and  her  legal  existence, — and  for  what? 
If  it  may  be  admitted  that  she  still  has  a  soul, 
it  is  of  too  little  importance  to  be  considered 
by  the  law.  From  this  legal  oneness  of  two 
beings,  arise  many  unjust  discriminations 
against  the  wife.  Ordinarily,  in  criminal  prac- 
tice she  can  not  bear  testmony  either  for  or 
against  her  husband.  Fortunately,  there  are 
cases  in  which  the  husband  is  made  to  feel  the 
disadvantages  of  having  absorbed  his  wife's 
personality.  "For  slanderous  words  spoken 
by  the  wife,  libel  published  by  her  alone,  tres- 
pass, assault  and  battery,  etc.;  he  is  liable  to 
be  sued,  whether  the  act  was  committed  with  or 
without  his  sanction  or  knowledge." 

The  injustice  of  the  common  law  is  plain 
when  it  assumes  the  absurdity  that  husband  and 
wife  for  punitive  purposes  are  one  and  the  same 


122       WOMAN   FKOM   BONDAGE   TO   FREEDOM 

person.  From  this  dictum  have  arisen  many 
social  evils,  among  others  the  destruction  of 
popular  reverence  for  the  law.  Under  the  op- 
erations of  this  law,  the  rights  of  the  married 
woman  are  so  few  and  elmentary  that  they  are 
almost  negligible.  For  her,  there  is  no  "  un- 
interrupted enjoyment  of"  her  "limbs",  her 
"body",  or  of  her  "reputation".  "If  a  wife 
be  injured  in  her  person",  Blackstone  says,  "or 
her  property,  she  can  bring  no  action  for  redress 
without  her  husband's  concurrence,  and  in  his 
name  as  well  as  her  own." 

Annie  Besant,  one  of  the  wisest  and  noblest 
of  women,  says  in  her  work  on  "Marriage": 
"If  in  a  railway  accident  a  married  woman  has 
her  leg  broken,  she  can  not  sue  the  railway 
company  for  damages;  she  is  not  a  damaged 
person;  in  the  eye  of  the  law,  she  is  a  piece  of 
damaged  property,  and  the  compensation  is  to 
be  made  to  her  owner.  If  she  is  attacked  and 
beaten,  she  can  not  summon  her  assailant;  her 
master  suffers  loss  and  inconvenience  by  the 
assault  on  his  housekeeper,  and  his  action  is 
necessary  to  obtain  redress.  If  she  is  libeled, 
she  can  not  protect  her  good  name,  for  she 
is  incapable  by  herself  of  maintaining  an 
action." 

A  ghastly  treatise  might  be  written  on  the 
legal  debasement  of  woman  under  the  English 
common  law.  In  the  presence  of  justice,  the 


WOMAN   AND   THE   LAW  123 

wife  has  no  standing  because  she  has  no  legal 
existence.  At  the  court  of  her  husband's 
"rights",  her  status  is  that  of  a  servant  or  a 
piece  of  property.  If  the  husband  is  granted 
a  divorce  for  unfaithfulness,  he  can  put  in 
a  claim  against  the  corespondent  for  monetary 
damages  sustained  through  the  loss  of  her  serv- 
ices. The  same  rule  of  law  applies  if  a  minor 
girl  has  been  seduced.  Regarded  as  the  prop- 
erty of  her  father,  she  has  no  redress  of  her 
own,  but  he  may  recover  damages. 

As  late  as  1856,  Lord  Lyndhurst  in  the  House 
of  Lords,  said :  "A  wife  is  separated  from  her 
husband  by  a  decree  of  the  ecclesiastical  Court, 
the  reason  for  the  decree  being  the  husband's 
misconduct — his  cruelty,  it  may  be,  or  his  adult- 
ery. From  that  moment  the  wife  is  almost  in  a 
state  of  outlawry.  She  may  not  enter  into  a 
contract,  or  if  she  do  so;  she  has  no  means  of 
enforcing  it.  The  law,  so  far  from  protect- 
ing, oppresses  her.  She  is  homeless,  helpless, 
hopeless,  and  almost  wholly  destitute  of  civil 
rights.  She  is  liable  to  all  manner  of  injustice, 
whether  by  plot  or  by  violence.  She  may  be 
wronged  in  all  possible  ways,  and  her  character 
may  be  mercilessly  defamed;  yet  she  has  no 
redress.  She  is  at  the  mercy  of  her  enemies. 
Is  that  fair?  Is  that  honest?  Can  it  be  vin- 
dicated upon  any  principle  of  justice,  of  mercy, 
or  of  common  humanity?" 


124       WOMAN   FBOM   BONDAGE   TO   FKEEDOM 

This  law  deprives  the  married  woman  of  her 
sacred  rights,  if  any  rights  in  this  world  are 
sacred ;  and  it  robs  her  of  self-respect.  It  kills 
the  nobler  virtues  of  the  home,  and  it  turns  the 
warm  heart  of  love  into  the  cold  stone  of  legal 
privilege.  The  wife  is  stripped  of  authority 
over  her  own  body;  sick  or  well,  or  revolted 
at  the  bestiality  of  her  husband,  she  has  no  pro- 
tection from  his  connubial  violence  or  brutal 
passion.  Through  marriage,  the  law  denies 
her  the  protection  it  gives  to  harlots  and  con- 
cubines. The  husband  can  not  be  guilty  of 
rape  if  the  act  is  committed  on  his  wife ;  he  can 
not  be  guilty  of  murder,  of  homicide,  nor  even 
of  misdemeanor,  if  his  uncouth  passion  destroys 
an  unborn  infant  or  perhaps  the  life  of  its 
mother,  as  well. 

Another  vicious  element  in  the  old  common 
law  is  the  provision  made  for  the  husband  to 
administer  corporal  punishment  to  his  wife. 
If  anything  may  be  expected  to  conserve  a 
wife's  personal  dignity,  it  is  an  occasional  beat- 
ing at  the  hands  of  one  who  should  love  and 
protect  her.  Think  how  inspiring  the  conjugal 
life  must  be  that  is  punctuated  with  a  cudgel- 
ing !  This  provision  of  the  law  suggests  the  old 
couplet : 

A  dog,  a  woman,  and  a  walnut-tree, 
The  more  you  beat  'em  the  better  they  be. 


WOMAN   AND   7HE  LAW  125 

In  fact,  wife-beating  has  been  practiced  so 
long  that  many  women  look  upon  it  as  a  right 
more  personal  to  themselves  than  to  their  hus- 
bands. In  some  benighted  parts  of  Kussia,  the 
wife  who  is  not  occasionally  "brushed  down" 
by  her  husband  feels  neglected,  and  suspects 
that  she  is  losing  ground  in  his  affections.  A 
parallel  state  of  mind  exists,  or  did  exist,  among 
the  women  known  as  anti-suffragists  in  en- 
lightened parts  of  America;  they  were  so  used 
to  the  indignity  of  a  subordinate  civic  position 
that  they  regarded  it  as  normal  to  their  sex, 
and  therefore  a  right — reprobating  the  "man- 
ishness"  of  their  sisters '  discontent  under  po- 
litical bondage. 

"We  read  in  Blackstone:  "The  husband  also 
[by  the  old  law]  might  give  his  wife  moderate 
correction.  For  as  he  is  to  answer  for  her 
misbehavior,  the  law  thought  it  reasonable  to 
entrust  with  him  this  power  of  restraining  her, 
by  domestic  chastisement,  in  the  same  mod- 
eration that  a  man  is  allowed  to  correct  his 
apprentices  or  children.  The  lower  rank  of 
people,  who  were  always  fond  of  the  old  com- 
mon law,  still  claim  and  exact  their  ancient  priv- 
ilege." The  great  commentator  construes  this 
as  a  wise  provision  of  law  for  the  protection  of 
women — something  for  their  general  good ;  and 
he  adds  without  intentional  humor,  "So  great 


126 

a  favorite  is  the  female  sex  of  the  laws  of  Eng- 
land' '! 

No  longer  than  forty  or  fifty  years  ago,  it  was 
common  for  some  men  under  their  "ancient 
privilege"  to  drag  their  wives  out  of  bed  by 
the  hair  of  their  heads,  to  tear  off  their  night- 
robes,  to  torture  them,  to  knock  them  about,  to 
dance  on  their  bruised  bodies,  to  beat  them 
with  sticks  of  prescribed  thickness,  and,  in  a 
word,  moderately  to  "correct"  them. 

Linked  with  man's  legal  right  to  correct  his 
spouse  was  his  authority  to  deprive  her  of  per- 
sonal liberty.  The  husband  was  delegated  auto- 
matically by  law  with  judicial  and  constraintive 
power  over  his  wife.  He  was  not  only  the 
judge  who  sentenced  her  without  due  process, 
but  he  was  her  jailer  as  well.  She  was  in  all 
essentials  his  property. 

The  English  law  subjects  the  married  woman 
to  many  concrete  hardships.  It  strips  her  of 
the  natural  rights  that  are  hers  while  unmar- 
ried, even  though  a  mother.  For  example: 
if  single,  she  owns  her  body  and  her  child,  if 
she  has  one ;  she  has  the  liberty  of  action  that 
her  married  sister  forfeits ;  she  can  own  prop- 
erty and  defend  herself  against  attack ;  she  pos- 
sesses a  measure  of  independence  and  personal 
liberty  for  which  she  is  accountable  only  to  the 
law.  Against  these  advantages  she  suffers  so- 
cial stigma  only  if  she  is  a  mother  or  a  woman 


WOMAN   AND   THE   LAW  127 

of  joy;  and  in  addition,  her  children,  being 
illegitimate,  are  restricted  in  their  rights  and 
made  to  feel  an  odium  that  ought  not  to  exist 
in  any  decent  society. 

Of  course  the  common  law  has  been  greatly 
modified  by  all  sorts  of  legislative  acts;  but 
its  spirit  is  not  dead.  Indeed  it  is  lively  enough 
to  show  the  state  of  abasement  into  which  wom- 
an has  been  kept  for  centuries  by  the  laws  of 
one  of  the  most  enlightened  nations  of  modern 
times. 

Some  of  the  anomalies  of  the  more  modern 
English  law  are  interesting.  A  woman  may 
be  queen  or  regent;  she  may  exercise  the  high- 
est political  rights;  yet,  until  recently,  women 
could  not  vote  at  a  parliamentary  election  nor 
be  elected  to  parliament.  Their  political  rights, 
such  as  they  have,  are  more  or  less  modified  by 
marriage  and  prejudiced  by  their  sex.  A  short 
time  ago,  woman  was  ineligible  to  most  of  the 
learned  professions  and  limited  in  admission  to 
university  degrees.  This  is  amazing  in  an  era 
of  intellectual  activity,  especially  when  one  ob- 
serves that  ignorant  moneybags  and  windy  pol- 
iticians are  freely  given  degrees  when  some  of 
the  most  intellectual  of  our  race  are  denied  them 
solely  on  account  of  sex.  Women  may  take  ex- 
.aminations  at  Oxford  and  Cambridge,  it  is  true, 
but  not  a  degree,  unless  the  rule  has  been  lately 
changed. 


128     'WOMAN  FROM  BONDAGE  TO  FREEDOM 

A  married  woman  having  property  is  "liable 
for  the  support  of  her  husband,  children,  and 
grandchildren  chargeable  to  any  union  or  par- 
ish". The  husband  has  the  first  right,  other 
things  being  equal,  to  the  legitimate  offspring; 
he  could  divorce  his  wife  for  adultery,  but  not 
long  ago  for  the  same  offense  she  could  not 
divorce  him  unless  she  could  show  cruelty,  or 
desertion  besides,  or  some  other  abomination 
on  his  part.  But  her  advancement  in  property 
rights  grows  steadily  more  hopeful. 

All  through  the  English  law  may  be  discov- 
ered vestiges  of  the  time  when  women  were  chat- 
tels and  very  little  else  in  the  eye  of  the  law. 
Yet  it  was  the  English  law  that  arose  above  the 
laws  of  all  other  nations  by  being  the  first  to 
take  from  adultery  the  sting  of  crime.  Sin  it 
might  be,  but  crime  it  should  not  be.  The  Eng- 
lish law-makers  had  gumption  enough  to  imply 
at  least  that  husbands  who  can  not  retain  the 
fidelity  of  their  wives  and  wives  who  lose  the 
fidelity  of  their  husbands  do  not  deserve  it,  gen- 
erally speaking.  The  English  law  with  all  its 
faults  was  at  least  sane  and  virile  enough  to 
be  philosophic  in  this  particular.  "Wife-beating 
and  witch-baiting  and  slave-whipping  have 
passed  out.  In  Scotland,  some  remnants  of  the 
early  sumptuary  laws  still  persist;  but  there 
as  elsewhere  the  lagging  spirit  of  the  law  is 
quickening  with  new  life. 


WOMAN   AND   THE  LAW  129 

The  idea  of  a  husband  regarding  himself  as 
injured  because  he  can  not  retain  the  love  and 
the  loyalty  of  his  wife,  is  ridiculous ;  but  when 
he  is  horny  enough  to  put  in  a  legal  claim  for 
damages,  he  sinks  beneath  contempt.  It  seems 
far  more  reasonable  for  the  wife  to  plead  dam- 
ages for  her  partner's  conjugal  failures. 

The  law's  unwisdom  also  is  manifest  in  its 
refusal  to  grant  a  divorce  where  collusion  can 
be  proved.  It  is  absurd  to  any  save  a  legal 
mind  for  a  court  to  honor  the  plea  of  one  party, 
but  to  reject  the  plea  of  both  parties  co-operat- 
ing in  the  same  purpose 

Godfrey,  in  his  "Science  of  Sex",  says: 
"The  enforced  continuance  of  an  unsuccessful 
union  is  perhaps  the  most  immoral  thing  that  a 
civilized  society  ever  countenanced,  far  less  en- 
couraged. The  morality  of  a  union  is  depend- 
ent upon  mutual  desire,  and  a  union  dictated 
by  any  other  cause  is  outside  the  moral  pale, 
however  custom  may  sanction  it,  or  religion 
and  law  condone  it". 

The  indecencies,  inconsistencies,  and  difficul- 
ties of  the  divorce  court  emanate  from  the 
traditions  of  the  canon  law  doctrine  of  the  in- 
dissolubility  of  marriage,  the  sinfulness  of 
extramatrimonial  embraces,  the  primitive  prop- 
erty idea  of  marriage,  and  the  ecclesiastical 
degradation  and  legal  subordination  of  woman, 


130         WOMAX    FROM   BONDAGE    TO    FEEEDOM 

Thus  a  breach  of  marriage  came  to  be  regarded 
as  a  public  injury. 

The  law  has  opposed  the  best  development  of 
woman's  moral  feelings.  "Morality",  says 
Havelock  Ellis,  "maybe  outraged  with  impunity 
provided  that  law  and  religion  have  been  in- 
voked". For  this  state  of  affairs  we  must 
thank  ecclesiastical  insolence  and  the  inquisi- 
torial tyranny  of  the  law — the  blind  parents  of 
anarchy.  In  the  words  of  William  von  Hum- 
boldt:  "Experience  frequently  convinces  us 
that  just  where  law  has  imposed  no  fetters,  mor- 
ality most  surely  binds ;  the  idea  of  external  co- 
ercion is  one  entirely  foreign  to  an  institution 
which,  like  marriage,  reposes  only  on  inclina- 
tion and  an  inward  sense  of  duty".  The  am- 
atory life  of  man  and  woman  can  not  be  regu- 
lated by  statute,  circumscribed  by  code,  nor  is 
it  subject  to  the  canon  law  traditions ;  it  must 
travel  its  own  road  and  go  to  hell  through 
ignorance  or  soar  to  heaven  through  wisdom. 
Legal  molds,  crudely  cast  for  the  masses,  in- 
evitably pinch  thousands  of  the  best  individual 
assets  of  society. 

In  the  present  state  of  mankind,  the  sexual 
demand  for  variation  is  a  fact  for  law-makers 
and  judges  to  consider;  it  can  not  be  ignored 
where  justice  is  desired;  and  it  is  best  taken 
care  of  by  allowing  individuals,  under  enlight- 
enment, to  work  out  their  own  salvation  in  their 


WOMAN   AND   THE   LAW  131 

own  unobtrusive  ways.  The  less  prying — the 
fewer  the  statutory  acts — the  better.  The  es- 
sential monogamic  element  will  continue,  and  it 
will  continue  to  take  care  of  itself;  but  if  it  is 
to  perish,  no  legislation  can  save  it. 

Men  have  made  rules  and  passed  laws  for 
one-sided  connubial  felicity  long  enough.  They 
have  considered  their  own  requirements,  within 
variable  degrees ;  whilst  the  inferior  position  of 
women  affords  them  only  the  lopsided  happiness 
of  adapting  themselves  to  their  husbands' 
pleasure,  regardless  of  their  own  physical  and 
spiritual  needs.  No  one  should  begrudge 
women  a  chance  at  last  to  take  a  hand  in  the 
making  of  laws  under  which  they  must  live. 
The  sexual  need  of  variation  is  as  much  a  part 
of  woman's  nature  as  it  is  of  man's;  and  any 
save  the  most  general  repressive  rules  are  use- 
less or  harmful.  The  vital  fires  of  love  can 
not  be  controlled  by  rote  and  rule.  They  are 
subject  only  to  the  unknown  god  that  presides 
over  the  inner  being  of  our  nature. 

We  shall  never  succeed  in  legislating  civiliza- 
tion on  ourselves.  Statutes  and  codes,  like  pre- 
cepts and  creeds,  are  mere  makeshifts,  wornout 
almost  before  they  are  fit  to  use.  Our  law 
courts  never  will  have  any  jurisdiction  over 
the  human  soul.  The  less  we  have  of  all  this 
that  we  can  get  along  without,  the  better.  The 
sense  of  freedom  in  love,  the  thrill  of  joy  in 


132       WOMAN   FROM   BONDAGE   TO    FREEDOM 

passion,  and  the  other  ecstasies  of  mood  in  the 
rhythm  of  life  were  not  born  of  codes  and  they 
never  will  work  well  in  stautory  yokes  and  re- 
ligious harness.  The  'Only  effective  statute 
law  is  one  that  has  genuine  public  approval — 
one  that  carries  the  conviction  of  justice  to  the 
average  mind;  and  the  only  religious  precepts 
that  can  help  us  are  those  that  enlighten  the 
emotions  while  appealing  to  the  mind. 

Alfred  Russel  Wallace  truthfully  said : '  *  Com- 
pared with  our  astounding  progress  in  physical 
science  and  its  practical  application,  our  system 
of  government,  of  administrative  justice,  of  na- 
tional education,  and  our  entire  social  and  moral 
organzation,  remain  in  a  state  of  barbarism". 
This  is  especially  true  of  our  legislative  sys- 
tem. Thousands  of  useless  laws  are  made  at  a 
cost  as  amazing  as  the  laws  themselves  are  bur- 
densome. Our  statutes  have  been  millstones  on 
the  neck  of  progress.  Our  printed  constitutions 
seldom  have  borne  any  vital  relation  to  gov- 
ernment. The  unthinking  class  accepts  prece- 
dent for  reason,  custom  in  the  place  of  common- 
sense,  and  the  lash  instead  of  justice ;  and  when 
it  does  make  a  protest,  it  cither  whines  or 
growls.  The  truth  is,  we  are  pharisaical  bar- 
barians. 

One  should  not  cry  justice  and  speak  un- 
justly. The  judiciary  deserves  serious  consid- 
eration, and  usually  it  gets  respectful  attention. 


WOMAN   AND   THE  LAW  133 

But  the  general  opinion  of  the  laity  is  that  the 
judges  are  more  likely  to  "hand  down"  their 
decisions  according  to  influence  than  according 
to  justice;  that  the  rich  get  what  they  want 
oftener  than  the  poor  what  they  deserve.  This 
of  course  is  not  always  true.  There  are  many 
judges  who  are  both  honest  and  intelligent. 
The  miscarriages  of  justice  result  from  the 
ignorance  of  the  law-makers  oftener  perhaps 
than  from  any  fault  of  the  judiciary.  It  is 
notoriously  true,  just  the  same,  that  the  so- 
called  legal  education  is  no  education  at  all. 
The  very  things  that  the  legal  gentry  and  the 
legislators  should  know  the  most  about,  they 
fail  in.  To  be  learned  in  the  technical  prece- 
dents of  practice — to  be  familiar  with  the  musty 
laws  of  other  days — is  of  no  progressive  impor- 
tance. The  science  upon  which  judicial  func- 
tions should  rest  is  extremely  modern.  The 
prated  "philosophy  of  the  law"  is  a  myth,  or, 
better  a  moth-eaten  weft  woven  of  darkness 
and  error  and  figured  with  passion  and  predj- 
udice  and  stained  with  blood  and  wet  with ' '  tears 
such  as  angels  weep". 

The  fundamental  necessities  of  legal  educa- 
tion are,  if  approximate  justice  is  the  aim,  a 
knowledge  of  the  animal  organism  and  its  rela- 
tions to  environment,  as  well  as  a  knowledge  of 
the  human  mind  and  that  of  its  comparative  his- 
tory. The  functions  of  the  brain  can  not  be 


134       'WOMAN    FROM   BONDAGE   TO    FREEDOM 

understood  if  the  animal  organism  is  not  under- 
stood ;  for  it  is  in  the  animal  organism  that  the 
mind  has  its  roots — roots  that  run  back  through 
aeons  of  organic  development. 

Punitive  laws  are  founded  on  vengeance  and 
on  the  phantom  notion  of  a  "free  moral 
agency",  which  we  know  never  has  existed  on 
this  flying  island  called  the  world.  Modern  sci- 
ence has  proved  that  to  deal  justly  with  the 
functions  of  the  will,  the  basic  functions  of  the 
organism  must  be  studied  from  their  dawn  down 
through  the  morning  of  life;  the  architecture 
of  superorganic  structure  must  be  known;  and 
the  by-products  of  emotive  function  should  be 
utilized  without  waste  and  needless  pain.  In 
dealing  with  the  question  of  human  justice,  it 
is  apparent  that  the  little  round  ovum  is  as 
much  a  thing  of  life  as  is  the  infant  that  has 
passed  through  the  dramatic  change  of  environ- 
ment called  birth. 

At  present,  legal  education  takes  little  note 
of  these  important  things,  and  with  psychology 
it  concerns  itself  almost  not  at  all.  It  follows 
that,  as  our  lawmakers  are  guided  by  the  legal 
mind  when  not  dominated  by  lobbyists  and 
superstitious  poltroonery,  the  evils  of  the  stat- 
ute books  must  be  attributed  to  ignorance.  For, 
to  understand  the  intricacies  of  the  working 
social  organism,  and  to  deal  with  them  intelli- 
gently, it  is  necessary  to  understand  human  na- 


WOMAN   AND   THE   LAW  135 

ture,  to  know  something  of  comparative  anthro- 
pology, and  all  the  little  that  has  been  learned 
of  psychology. 

This  takes  us  back  along  the  trail  of  earlier 
types,  through  comparative  zoology,  and  into 
the  very  cell-life  of  things.  Certainly,  no  one 
should  be  expected  to  know  anything  worth 
while  of  the  social  structure  and  its  functions 
who  knows  nothing  of  the  individuals  whose  in- 
itiative and  reactions  determine  social  phenom- 
ena ;  nor  can  much  pertinent  data  be  gathered 
from  a  study  of  individuals  by  one  who  knows 
nothing  of  the  cell-world  wherein  each  indi- 
vidual is,  as  it  were,  an  embodied  universe.  The 
lack  of  this  knowledge  is  the  well-spring  of 
judicial  blunder  and  legal  perversion,  both  hav- 
ing weighed  so  heavily  on  women  for  ages. 
Thus  it  is  that  many  of  the  misfortunes  of 
woman  before  the  law  and  many  phases  of  her 
miserable  state,  now  happily  passing,  are  owing 
to  ignorance  and  the  faulty  sentiment  thereof 
more  perhaps  than  to  premeditated  tyranny  on 
the  part  of  man,  as  a  law-maker. 


OMAN  has  been  the  nether  millstone 
for  ages.  If  she  becomes  the  upper, 
it  may  be  with  a  vengeance ;  but  she 
will  not  grind  us  finer  in  her  new 
role  than  man  has  in  his  old.  But  if  woman 
should  rise  to  a  dominant  position,  let  us  hope 
it  will  be  with  understanding  and  not  in  the 
mere  imitation  of  man's  failures  and  errors.  If 
the  political  activities  of  women  are  to  echo 
those  of  men,  there  will  be  confusion  in  our  halls. 
If  women  fancy  that  human  nature  is  going  to 
to  be  changed  by  their  ballots,  they  are  mis- 
taken. If  they  use  their  hard-won  civic  rights, 
not  as  trophies  of  victory  nor  yet  as  a  means 
of  political  reprisals,  but  as  agencies  to  be 
employed  sensibly  for  the  common  weal,  the 
van  of  progress  will  move  forward. 

The  great  inspiration  of  the  feminist  move- 
ment is  the  worthy  desire  to  live  a  full  life — 
the  yearning  to  reach  the  heights  of  being,  and 
thus  to  attain  a  better  command  of  the  art  of 
living.  Human  beings,  surely,  are  justified  in 
responding  to  this  inspiration.  The  soul  that 
will  not  struggle  for  its  rights  is  unworthy  to 
possess  them.  The  soul  that  relinquishes  its 

137 


138        WOMAX    FKOM    BONDAGE    TO    FREEDOM 

rights  is  guilty  of  self-mutilation.  No  one 
should  fear  to  explore  new  realms  where  wider 
possibilities  abound;  but  everyone  should  hold 
fast  to  all  the  good  that  has  been  wrenched 
from  bitter  experience  along  the  old  roads. 

Humanity  has  never  feared  to  suffer,  and  it 
never  should  be  afraid  to  laugh :  for  suffering 
and  happiness  is  our  lot.  Suffering  is  the  sea- 
son of  spiritual  regeneration ;  and  happiness  is 
the  time  to  spend  spiritual  wealth.  These  are 
the  two  seasons  of  the  soul — the  climate  of 
human  consciousness.  We  can  no  more  escape 
our  spiritual  conditions  than  we  can  avoid  our 
physical  environment;  but  both  can  be  made 
better.  This  elemental  fact  justifies  all  our 
efforts  to  enlarge  our  opportunities  to  make  life 
richer  and  fuller. 

Our  ideal  should  be  to  become  entirely  hu- 
man. When  that  stage  has  been  reached,  there 
will  be  time  enough  to  dream  of  the  superman. 
Xow  the  term  has  no  meaning — no  more  than 
the  words  angel  and  saint.  When  we  shall  be 
able  to  say,  Lo,  we  are  liuman  at  last!  there 
no  longer  will  be  overman  and  underman  con- 
noted by  sex.  There  still  will  be  relative  differ- 
ences between  men  and  women  but  not  of  posi- 
tion, since  in  all  the  essentials  of  living  there 
will  be  equality  of  opportunity;  and  in  the 
striving  for  the  ideals  of  life,  there  will  be  the 
fullest  co-operation  between  the  sexes. 


OVERMAN    AND    TIN  DERM  AN  139 

It  is  possible  that  humankind  yet  may  de- 
velop a  third  sex.  Human  society  may  be 
forced  to  parallel  that  of  the  bees  by  forming  a 
third  sex  and  diverting  it  to  the  end  that  mil- 
lions of  human  beings  may  be  content  to  be 
what  millions  now  are  compelled  to  be,  willy- 
nilly  :  that  is  to  say,  the  loveless  workers  of  the 
race.  As  social  beings,  we  are  too  young  to 
determine  the  trend  of  social  organization ;  but 
we  can  guess  that  it  will  eventually  so  limit  the 
rights  and  so  circumscribe  the  liberties  of  the 
workers  that  their  very  thoughts  shall  become 
social  instincts  forgetful  of  self,  and  striving 
only  for  the  good  of  all;  and  that  the  joy  of 
living  will  beat  in.  the  great  heart  of  the  hive 
humming  among  the  stars. 

This  may  come  to  pass,  and  it  may  not.  Pres- 
ent conditions  are  not  favorable  to  prophecy. 
But  as  we  interpret  our  longings  for  justice, 
it  would  seem  that  society  has  no  right,  and  that 
it  should  have  110  power,  to  suppress  the  nor- 
mal functions,  to  limit  the  spiritual  aspirations 
of  individuals ;  that  society  has  no  right  to  cir- 
cumscribe the  natural  acts,  nor  to  destroy  the 
elemental  instincts  of  the  individual  so  long  as 
these  natural  acts  and  instincts  do  no  harm  to 
the  social  organism.  Yet  that  is  what  society 
is  doing  to-day,  and  what  it  has  been  doing  since 
the  records  runneth  not  to  the  contrary. 

Slavery  has  existed  so  long,  in  so  many  forms, 


140       (WOMAX    FROM    BONDAGE    TO    FREEDOM 

that  the  most  soulful  of  our  kind  are  spiritually 
hardened ;  those  who  could  not  be  calloused  died 
of  pity  long  before  the  war.  Spiritual  glad- 
ness can  not  exist  in  a  world  that  holds  even 
one  slave.  Life  is  meaningless  in  thraldom. 
Superstitious  bondage,  it  is  true,  may  produce 
a  mania  in  the  victims  in  which  exaggerated 
ecstasy  forms  a  kind  of  compensation  for  the 
slavery  endured;  but  the  compensation  is  not 
real,  but  merely  the  ignis  fatuus  of  civilization 
that  leads  us  astray. 

The  economic  slavery  of  this  period  is  not 
as  devitalizing  as  it  was,  but  it  is  bad  enough. 
The  wage-slaves  used  to  find  forgetfulness  in 
drink;  now  they  find  an  unrest  in  prohibition 
that  leads  to  rabies.  Having  shed  some  of  the 
rags  of  slavery,  they  are  eager  to  put  on  the 
robes  of  tyranny.  This  is  precisely  according 
to  human  nature,  because  human  nature  is  far 
more  stupid  than  wise.  Xo  matter  what  class 
rules,  the  ignorance  that  is  in  us  is  responsible 
for  the  needless  misery  sure  to  follow.  It  is 
the  same  in  all  classes :  the  priests,  the  poli- 
ticians, the  capitalists,  and  the  so-called  pro- 
letariat. The  bane  of  our  kind  is  ignorance. 
Ignorance  begets  misery,  and  misery  begets 
crime.  The  propaganda  of  religious  supersti- 
tion thrives  under  economic  slavery.  Wage- 
tyranny  wipes  out  religious  superstition  and 
writes  down  economic  superstition  in  human 


OVERMAN   AND   TJNDEEMAN  141 

blood.  The  beast  within  us  does  not  change 
when  it  changes  its  hide.  Whether  the  success 
of  feminism  will  kill  the  beast,  remains  to  be 
seen.  One  thing  is  tolerably  certain:  the  free- 
dom of  woman  can  not  make  him  worse  than 
he  has  been  through  all  recorded  time. 

It  is  not  work  that  kills.  The  workers  who 
kill  time  butcher  themselves.  Capitalism  and 
caste  and  class  are  old  offenders.  Valid  hap- 
piness rests  on  a  foundation  of  honest  work  and 
fair  play.  The  man  who  has  found  his  work 
and  the  woman  who  has  found  hers  have 
achieved  their  destiny.  Napoleon  said:  "A 
man  is  immortal  till  his  work  is  done".  Back 
of  his  words  looms  a  grander  idea:  Man  is 
immortal  only  through  his  work;  and  that  per- 
haps is  all  the  immortality  he  deserves. 

We  are  told  in  glittering  homilies  that  wom- 
an's work  is  in  her  home;  and  common  experi- 
ence tells  us  that  countless  thousands  of  women 
have  no  homes.  What  are  these  women  to  do, 
and  how  many  of  them  find  their  work?  The 
most  of  them  are  misfits;,  most  of  them  are 
buffeted  about  by  a  fate  as  aimless  as  it  is 
cruel ;  many  of  them  are  tied  up  to  hostile  tasks ; 
and  finally,  the  most  of  them  are  cast  out,  as 
the  good  God's  Did  shoes,  into  the  back 
alleys  of  civilization.  In  our  pre-war  order, 
these  women  toiled  and  suffered  for  what?  To 
wear  a  few  rags  and  to  eat  a  few  crusts — to 


142     (WOMAN  FBOM  BONDAGE  TO  FREEDOM 

glut  the  capitalist  with  luxuries  and  to  dress  his 
fancy  women  in  silks  and  jewels.  The  present 
order  is  slightly  different,  but  far  from  ideal. 
What  is  to  be  done?  Enlightened  men  and 
women  with  equal  civic  rights  must  eventually 
answer  the  question. 

The  noblest  inspiration  is  that  which  directs 
us  to  our  work ;  yet  in  our  social  order  too  few 
of  us  ever  find  it.  Nothing  is  more  dignified 
than  honest  labor ;  but  how  many  human  beings 
labor  in  the  light  of  spiritual  dignity?  Why 
is  it  that  idle  fashion  scorns  those  who  work 
with  their  hands?  The  fault  is  not  altogether 
with  idle  fashion,  bad  as  it  is.  Why  do  humble 
craftsmen,  and  earnest  peasant  women  working 
in  the  fields  look  so  fine  in  art?  Is  it  because 
art  lets  us  see  them  on  pedestals  built  by  useful 
work?  Is  it  because  art  clothes  them  with 
spiritual  grandeur?  If  all  were  truly  civilized, 
they  would  look  just  as  fine  as  the  beaver  or 
the  bee. 

As  we  have  seen,  woman's  work  for  ages  has 
been  slavery.  Arrogance  and  ignorance  have 
been  her  masters.  The  lash  has  fallen  on  her 
heart  as  she  was  driven  forth  to  overtax  her 
strength  while  her  mind  was  darkened.  These 
mothers  have  given  sons;  and  only  from  such 
mothers  could  come  the  tyrants ;  only  from  such 
mothers  could  come  our  pettifoggers  and  priests 
— the  parasites  of  the  poor  and  the  apologists 


OVERMAN   AND   UNDERMAN  143 

for  the  rich!  Only  from  such  mothers  could 
come  sons  and  daughters  capable  of  objecting 
to  better  conditions. 

The  specialization  of  work,  brought  about  by 
the  differences  of  sex,  forced  woman  to  learn 
many  useful  things  beyond  the  primitive  ca- 
pability of  man.  Olive  Schreiner  suggests  that 
necessity,  operating  through  woman,  first 
taught  man  to  walk  on  his  hind  legs.  Grad- 
ually, the  invention  of  machinery  and  the  re- 
distribution of  labor  temporarily  confused  so- 
ciety by  introducing  new  forms  of  slavery  which 
forced  women  to  degenerate,  many  of  them 
from  slaves  into  parasites — two  classes  ever  in 
opposition  to  the  best  interests  of  society. 

Pericles  saw  life  from  the  summit  of  civiliza- 
tion. We  who  dream  of  lordlier  heights  would 
do  well  to  recall  what  that  wise  old  Greek  said 
to  the  Athenian  women :  ' 'Aspire  only  to  those 
virtues  that  are  peculiar  to  your  sex,  and  think 
it  your  greatest  praise  not  to  be  talked  of  one 
way  or  another".  Perhaps  our  epoch  is  not 
agreeable  to  such  counsel,  for  we  know  that 
these  words  fall  on  deaf  ears  to-day.  Many 
of  our  women  unfortunately  imitate  masculine 
politics,  on  the  theory  maybe  of  fighting  the 
devil  with  fire ;  whatever  the  reason,  they  have 
caught  the  itch  of  notoriety  and  noise  from  the 
men,  until  nearly  all  our  women  leaders  lust 
grossly  for  the  public  press. 


144       WOMAN   FEOM   BONDAGE   TO   FREEDOM! 

The  time,  so  long  coining,  for  women  to  shed 
the  meanest  of  their  shackles  seems  to  be  upon 
us.  A  world-cataclysm,  shaking  civilization  to 
its  foundation,  [has  crystallized  the  feminist 
movement  into  somewhat  definite  form.  For 
the  first  time  in  history,  the  position  of  women 
has  risen  during  war.  The  rule  has  been  for 
their  position  to  fall  through  warfare  and  to 
rise  with  the  civilization  founded  on  the  arts 
of  peace.  It  is  too  early  to  say  what  the  final 
effect  of  the  world's  greatest  war  will  be  on 
the  status  of  womanhood.  "We  can  be  sure  only 
of  this :  women  have  demonstrated  their  fitness 
to  co-operate  with  men  in  the  arts  of  war  as 
they  had  previously  in  the  arts  of  peace.  The 
stress  of  Serbia  opened  wide  the  door  to  wom- 
an's usefulness  in  war.  Her  success  in  the 
Levant  assured  her  an  opportunity  in  western 
Europe.  Her  work  in  the  hospital,  in  the  field, 
in  the  factory,  on  the  platform,  in  business,  and 
at  home,  is  too  well  known  to  be  more  than  men- 
tioned. On  the  other  hand,  militarism,  usually 
the  enemy  of  woman  and  a  bar  to  her  advance- 
ment, may  have  done  her  morals  a  grievous 
hurt — more  harm  than  many  generations  can 
heal. 

Whatever  the  future  may  hold,  this  is  sure : 
The  present  tendency  of  society  is  toward  eco- 
nomic equality  between  the  sexes.  Cradle-songs 
no  more  will  lull  women  to  sleep.  The  woman 


OVERMAN   AND   UNDERMAN  145 

who  mnst  earn  her  own  living — who  must  work 
out  her  destiny  unaided  by  a  mate — will  cease 
to  rely  on  tradition  and  prayer;  but  she  will 
seize  on  every  facility  that  society  has  to  offer. 
Only  a  wretched  creature  would  think  of  throw- 
ing an  obstacle  in  her  way. 

Men  and  women  are  beginning  to  see  the  un- 
wisdom of  strife  between  the  sexes,  of  competi- 
tion instead  of  co-operation,  of  independence 
rather  than  co-ordination  of  effort.  They  are 
beginning  to  realize  that  neither  sex  can  reach 
the  highest  plane  of  material  wellbeing  and  of 
spiritual  unfolding  without  the  other;  that,  so- 
ciologically, the  help  that  is  meet  for  woman 
is  man;  even,  as  in  their  intimate  relations, 
the  help-meet  of  man  is  woman.  The  element 
of  independence,  which  makes  for  cleavage  be- 
tween the  sexes,  is  a  factor  of  degeneracy,  no 
matter  whether  it  is  found  in  the  ''new  wom- 
an's movement",  which  is  very  old,  or  in  the 
old  man's  inertia,  which  is  not  very  young. 

The  Anglo-Saxon  women,  so  called,  aroused 
all  the  peoples  of  the  earth  by  a  movement  that 
seems  destined  to  liberate  the  women  of  East 
and  West,  of  North  and  South.  The  age  of 
Pericles  will  be  eclipsed,  we  hope,  by  a  greater 
age  when  women  shall  be  free.  The  senile  civ- 
ilizations shall  take  on  youthful  vigor  while 
holding  fast  to  mature  wisdom.  If  this  shall 


146       WOMAN   FROM   BONDAGE   TO   FEEEDOM 

come  to  pass  it  will  be  through,  world-wide  co- 
operation of  earnest  men  and  women. 

Idle  polemics  on  the  superiority  of  one  sex 
has  gone  out  of  fashion.  It  no  longer  is  a 
question  of  capability,  but  of  relative  differ- 
ences of  function  between  the  sexes — functions 
which  must  be  co-ordinated  if  we  would  achieve 
the  greatest  good  for  both.  It  makes  no  differ- 
ence whether  the  average  brain  of  man  is  heav- 
ier than  that  of  woman;  but  if  it  did  matter, 
Professor  L.  Manouvrier's  deductions  would 
be  pertinent;  for  he  has  shown  "that  the  ac- 
tive organic  mass  of  woman's  body  is  to  that 
of  man's  as,  at  most,  seventy  to  one  hundred", 
wrhilst  her  " brain-weight  is  to  man's  as  ninety 
to  one  hundred".  This  " superiority  of  com- 
parative brain-mass,  however,  implies  no  in- 
tellectual superiority",  he  adds,  "but  is  merely 
a  characteristic  of  short  people  and  children". 
The  fact  of  relativity  between  the  sexes  is  the 
sole  basis  of  a  philosophy  that  has  any  prag- 
matic bearing  on  the  development  of  the  race. 

The  obvious  differences  between  men  and 
women  are  structural,  physiologic,  and  psychic ; 
sociologically,  their  differences  are  of  opportu- 
nity and  training;  intellectually,  the  possibil- 
ities are  equally  common  to  both.  It  may  be 
said  broadly  that  man  is  stronger  of  body — 
w^oman  is  stronger  of  constitution;  that  man  is 
a  better  fighting  animal — woman  is  a  better 


OVERMAN   AND   TTNDERMAN  147 

domesticator ;  that  man  is  better  fitted  to  guard 
the  home  than  is  woman  who  created  it;  that 
man  has  become  a  better  inventor  of  the  arts 
and  implements  of  war,  just  as  woman  has  come 
to  surpass  him  in  the  domestic  arts.  Thus 
the  sexes  differ  in  characteristics  which,  how- 
ever, overlap  and  interweave.  On  these  co- 
ordinated differences  the  strength  of  the  race 
stands. 

It  is  suggested  that  the  human  being  is, 
among  other  things,  a  detached  form  of  con- 
sciousness conditioned  by  what  we  call  en- 
vironment— a  form  which  epitomizes  the  uni- 
verse— a  form  of  consciousness  that  has  become 
intensified  as  a  focus  intensifies  light  by  making 
the  rays  conical — a  form  that  is  sentient  and  in 
a  way,  automatic.  This  idea  is  supported  in 
many  ways,  among  others  by  the  facility  with 
which  the  soul  adapts  itself  as  its  needs  alter. 
We  find  a  new  psychologic  force,  so  to  speak, 
springing  up  wherever  there  is  a  new  need. 
Conditions  change  and  men  and  women  are  sup- 
posed to  change  with  them.  How  much  they 
really  do  change  is  a  question.  Through  the 
darkness  of  ignorance  the  sexes  stumbled  and 
fell  into  the  bogs  of  competition  and  blind 
strife.  Has  human  nature  been  changed  by 
the  fall?  No  one  can  say.  I  fancy  that  woman 
still  is  as  a  healing  salve  to  man's  hurts — a  rest 
and  a  joy  to  his  nerves — the  restorer  of  his 


148         WOMAN  FROM   BONDAGE   TO   FEEEDOM 

spent  power,  and  the  courage  of  his  soul ;  but, 
say  some,  competition  has  made  her  his  nettle- 
rash,  the  thorn  in  his  flesh,  the  gall  in  his  wine. 
But  the  true  man  still  is  a  pillar  of  strength 
to  the  true  woman — still  her  protector  and  pro- 
vider— still  her  faithful,  if  somewhat  frisky, 
comrade  on  life's  trackless  sands.  I  do  not 
like  to  think  of  him  as  her  assailant  in  ambush, 
who  sets  traps  and  digs  pitfalls  for  her  feet.  I 
do  not  like  to  think  of  her  as  his  vampire — as 
the  worm  that  turns — as  the  antagonist  of  man. 
Nevertheless,  as  man  and  woman  strive  more 
and  more  for  economic  independence  of  one  an- 
other, rather  than  for  economic  co-operation, 
they  will  find  less  and  less  spiritual  need  of  one 
sex  for  the  other;  and  consequently  their  sexual 
life  will  fall  to  lower  levels.  Human  sexuality 
is  an  accurate  barometer  of  spirituality.  As 
each  finds  less  spiritual  need  of  the  other,  they 
will  the  more  easily  fall  into  opposition  harm- 
ful to  both;  and  thus  they  will  tend  to  close 
in  a  vicious  circle  what  should  be  the  open  helix 
of  progress. 

It  seems  too  self-evident  to  be  stated  again 
that  there  should  be  no  conflict  between  the 
sexes,  as  sexes.  True,  the  wage  competition 
between  men  and  women  is  asexual;  but  that 
competition  should  not  exist.  Equal  pay  for 
equal  work  is  only  commons ense  practically  ap- 


OVERMAN   AND   UNDERMAN  149 

plied.  Decency  demands  it,  and  the  wellbeing 
of  society  can  not  exist  without  it. 

The  successful  person  in  well  ordered  society 
is  not  the  one  who  has  wrung  riches  and  power 
from  others — not  the  one  who  has  become  con- 
spicuous for  a  day  or  for  a  century — not  the 
most  learned,  nor  the  greatest  philanthropist; 
but  that  person  who,  in  passing  through  the 
threatening  days  of  this  short  life,  renders  the 
most  good  to  others,  and  who  inflicts  and  suf- 
fers the  fewest  wounds  and  the  fewest  defeats 
of  soul.  That  person  is  successful  to  whom 
every  day  is  a  Sabbath  day  that  brings  a  gleam 
of  joy  to  the  sentient  world. 

Competition  for  bread  between  men  and  wom- 
en, or  between  adults  and  children,  is  mon- 
strous. Strife  may  strengthen  the  race,  but 
conflict  between  the  sexes  must  weaken  it,  be- 
cause nothing  could  be  more  contrary  to  reason 
and  to  every  known  principle  of  the  higher  order 
of  things. 

Woman  is  essentially  the  home-keeper.  It  is 
natural  that  she  should  be  the  soul  presiding 
at  the  hearth.  Nothing  could  be  better  for  the 
individual  —  nothing  better  for  society.  But 
misfortune  has  driven  her  forth  and  thrust 
her  into  unsympathetic  labor.  She  has  been 
pushed  into  competition  with  man.  Society  has 
committed  this  sin  against  her  and  so  long  as 
the  competition  is  tolerated,  society  has  no  right 


150       {WOMAN   FROM   BONDAGE   TO   FREEDOM 

to  withhold  from  her  any  of  the  privileges  of  the 
game. 

The  great  law  of  sex  is  divergence  of  func- 
tion, unity  of  purpose.  This  beneficent  law  is 
violated  every  time  woman  assumes  man's  func- 
tions, or  man  woman's.  But  the  onus  of  this 
violation  should  not  fall  on  the  unwilling 
victim.  Man's  regime  dragged  woman  into  the 
lists  of  capital  and  labor  at  war,  or  united  in 
unscrupulous  efforts  to  rob.  While  such  condi- 
tions last,  it  is  the  clear  duty  of  society  on  the 
whole  to  maintain  fair  play  between  the  sexes. 

The  sexes  should  not  war  against  one  another, 
but  together  against  the  causes  of  disorder — 
against  our  blind  system  of  economics — against 
our  ignorant  schemes  of  education — against  the 
vices  of  capitalism,  the  manias  of  extreme  rad- 
icalism, the  superstitions  of  religion,  the  evils 
of  our  marriage  system;  against  the  haphaz- 
ards of  parenthood,  the  crimes  against  child- 
hood and  age — against  the  cruelties  of  creed, 
greed,  and  custom — against  the  prejudices  of 
caste,  wealth,  and  power.  Not  until  the  sexes 
strike  hand  and  touch  heart  in  a  world-over 
movement  seeking  light  where  there  is  darkness, 
shall  justice  even  so  much  as  try  to  reign  on 
earth. 

Men  have  tried  to  nationalize  education. 
Women  should  try  to  nationalize  health — health 
of  body  and  hygiene  of  soul.  It  is  better  for 


OVERMAN   AND   TJNDEBMAN  151 

the  State  to  have  its  citizens  well-born  than 
highly  educated  and  measly.  No  degree  of 
learning  can  atone  for  miserable  inheritance. 
No  nation  can  become  great  that  can  not  pro- 
duce healthy  children;  but  many  nations  have 
been  great  without  state  educational  systems. 
The  best  primary  school  is  the  home;  the  best 
teacher  is  the  wholesome  influence  of  home. 
Colleges  and  universities  are  failures  if  not 
built  on  the  foundation  of  the  home-influences. 
The  spirit  of  the  home  is  woman.  The  society 
that  drives  her  from  her  home  into  the  market- 
place commits  sin;  and  the  society  that  forces 
her  into  unfit  motherhood  commits  suicide. 

Man  has  written  his  own  nature  into  the  very 
constitution  of  society;  he  has  made  its  law  in 
his  own  image.  The  nature  of  woman  has  been 
forced  to  adapt  itself  to  circumstances.  Very 
likely,  if  woman  had  made  the  laws  they  would 
have  been  little  better.  The  truth  is  that  neither 
sex  alone  is  competent  to  regulate  the  ethical 
and  the  intellectual  relations  of  society,  al- 
though either  sex  may,  after  a  fashion,  take  care 
of  the  joint  material  resources.  The  awaken- 
ing of  women  to  a  realization  that  action  on 
their  part  is  necessary  to  social  best  being  is 
one  of  the  promising  sociological  phenomena  of 
our  times. 

Woman  can  reach  her  highest  plane  of  devel- 
opment only  by  the  cultivation  and  a  conserva- 


152       WOMAN   FKOM   BONDAGE   TO   FEEEDOM 

tion  of  her  feminine  characteristics  and  powers, 
not  by  the  assumption  of  the  masculine.  The 
differences  in  character  of  men  and  women  con- 
stitute the  lure  of  the  sexes,  one  for  the  other, 
from  which  springs  the  inspiration  of  the  race. 
The  secret  of  civilization  lies  not  in  the  oblit- 
erating of  these  differences,  but  in  the  accentuat- 
ing and  in  the  harmonizing  of  them.  For  the 
principles  of  human  nature  can  no  more  be 
changed  by  our  own  conscious  efforts  than  a 
man  can  lift  himself  by  pulling  his  shoestrings. 
The  collective  soul  of  mankind  can  grow  only 
through  a  co-operation  of  the  sexes,  in  which 
man  helps  to  make  woman  more  womanly  and 
woman  helps  to  make  man  more  manly,  and  in 
which  both  help  to  make  coming  generations 
healthier  and  free  from  the  mistakes  that  have 
embarrassed  their  own  generation. 

A  commonsensibly  arranged  co-operation  be- 
tween men  and  women  should  bring  about  equal 
rights  under  the  law,  equal  opportunities,  equal 
privileges,  equal  freedom  of  choice  in  mar- 
riage and  divorce,  equal  moral  and  civic  duties 
in  all  affairs  that  equally  concern  both  sexes. 

Such  self-evident  truths  should  need  no  cham- 
pion in  any  enlightened  age.  It  has  been  urged 
however  that  as  men  and  women  have  different 
groups  of  feelings,  their  mental  attitude  is  not 
the  same,  and  therefore  that  they  are  not  sub- 
ject to  the  same  rules  of  governance.  The  an- 


OVERMAN   AND   UFDERMAN  153 

swer  to  this  is  that  woman  stands  at  the  gates 
of  life — man  at  the  frontiers;  one  represents 
the  metaphysical  or  idealistic  side  of_the  race — 
the  other,  the  physical  and  practical  side.  Co- 
operative harmony  is  all  the  more  essential  to 
the  welfare  of  the  present  generation,  and  it  is 
quite  indispensable  to  the  future  happiness  of 
the  child  coiled  in  the  loins  of  to-day. 


THE  FEMINIST  MOVEMENT 


OMAN  was  the  first  slave;  she  may 
be  the  last  master.  Nature  intended 
her  for  neither.  Conditions,  new  to 
ancient  humanity,  were  responsible 
for  her  earlier  bondage.  The  mind  in  its  child- 
hood, and  sentiment  in  its  infancy  may  be  for- 
given much.  It  is  possible  also  that  conditions  in 
the  future,  for  which  humanity  may  not  be 
prepared,  shall  make  hers  the  master-sex.  Give 
the  race  time  enough  however  and  neither  sex 
will  dominate  the  other.  Give  human  beings 
time  enough  and  there  will  be  no  sentient  slaves 
left  on  earth.  Men  and  women  will  be  mas- 
ters not  of  each  other  but  of  themselves,  of  law, 
order,  and  energy.  Justice  will  be  their  god. 
The  traditions  of  human  cruelty  will  be  on  a 
level  with  our  folk-lore,  or  the  tales  of  Atlantis. 
Mercy,  no  longer  needed,  will  have  fallen  into 
poetic  memory.  Beauty  and  Strength  will  be 
the  pillars  of  society ;  and  Love  will  be  the  only 
religion. 

Let  us  have  confidence  enough  in  humanity  to 
predict  its  future  attainments!  Let  us  have 
reverence  enough  for  its  wise  potentiality  to 

155 


156        WOMAN    FROM   BONDAGE    TO    FREEDOM 

forecast  its  coining  glory!  Let  us  have  a  fixed 
faith  in  its  destiny;  and  let  us  feel  a  fanatic 
happiness,  if  you  please,  in  that  faith !  But  let 
us  not  close  our  eyes  to  the  fact  that  the  trail 
of  the  past  is  short  compared  with  the  road  that 
humanity  must  travel  in  the  future. 

Progress  is  very  slow  when  measured  by  our 
nervous  vision.  Shift  for  a  moment  the  view- 
point by  so  much  as  a  concept,  and  all  our 
changes  appear  to  have  come  overnight;  we 
are  bewildered  by  the  rush  of  things.  One  rea- 
son for  this  is  that  the  mind  of  man  is  not  pre- 
pared for  the  tragedies  and  comedies  of  life; 
if  it  were  prepared,  there  would  be  neither 
tragedy  nor  comedy;  and  without  its  smiles 
and  tears  the  soul  would  be  poor  indeed. 
"Whether  we  view  progress  as  slow  or  swift,  we 
must  know  that  it  will  be  long. 

The  wise  fatalist  assumes  that  what  has  hap- 
pened, was  inevitable ;  that  what  is  to  happen, 
he  may  have  a  hand  in.  Nothing  is  gained  by 
mourning  over  the  past;  but  a  great  deal  may 
be  gained  by  considering  the  future.  This 
makes  it  possible  for  mankind  to  think  out  its 
destiny.  A  little  thought  goes  farther  than 
much  prayer.  The  feminist  movement  is  hu- 
manity thinking  in  terms  of  social  progress; 
and  this  thought  is  expressing  itself  through 
the  vitality  of  womanhood. 

Primitive  man  fought  the  great  cave-bear  and 


THE   FEMINIST   MOVEMENT  157 

the  saber-tooth  tiger — and  was  victorious.  His 
generations  have  overcome  many  more  formi- 
dable obstacles.  The  victory  of  man  over  beast 
was  owing  to  the  advantages  of  flexible  thought 
over  rigid  instinct.  The  mastery  of  man  over 
his  environment  is  the  power  of  thought  over 
nature.  The  feminist  movement  is  the  strug- 
gle of  thought  with  the  inertia  of  society — the 
sluggish,  unreasoning  instinct  of  mass-mind. 
In  this  struggle  thought  must  win. 

By  accident  or  design,  in  some  period  of  pre- 
historic darkness,  the  hand  came  in  contact 
with  a  strange  object  which  it  grasped  awk- 
wardly at  first.  The  object  was  a  key  which 
the  mind  has  learned  to  use  and,  by  its  use,  to 
unlock  the  door  of  relativity  that  conditions 
all  life.  Through  the  door  of  relationship  we 
discovered  the  laws  of  activity,  called  progress. 

The  key  is  represented  by  invention  which  at 
first  was  crudely  mechanical.  The  development 
of  invention  enabled  man  to  gain  increasing  con- 
trol of  the  external  world — to  transform  it  to 
his  use  and  material  benefit.  The  use  of  the 
key  is  represented  by  the  automatic  psychic 
power  that  came  to  be  the  soul  of  the  social 
body.  This  soul  contains,  among  other  princi- 
ples, a  moral  force  that  guides  human  nature — 
a  force  that  aspires,  as  it  were,  to  the  ultimate 
control  of  our  being.  With  this  soul  the  fem- 
inist movement  is  concerned. 


158       WOMAN   FKOM   BONDAGE   TO   FREEDOM 

Primitive  men  singly  fought  wild  beasts  and 
slew  them.  Later  men  united  to  overcome  the 
harsh  conditions  in  which  they  found  them- 
selves. Modern  men  socially  organized  are 
transcending  one  after  another  of  the  laws  of 
ether  and  energy  which  hamper  them.  That  is 
to  say,  continually  we  are  bending  natural  prin- 
ciples to  our  will.  "We  have  in  fact  learned 
how  to  make  use  of  adverse  phenomena  as  the 
sailor  of  contrary  winds.  So  we  shall  learn 
to  overcome  the  social  inertia  hostile  to  civ- 
ilization; and  the  feminist  movement,  as  one 
of  the  factors  of  progress,  will  help  to  do  it — 
it  has  to  help,  for  the  die  is  cast.  In  time  we 
shall  rid  ourselves  of  kings,  capitalism,  mili- 
tarism, and  syndicalism.  We  shall  find  a  means 
of  making  the  soil  of  earth  as  free  as  the  air  of 
heaven;  and  the  feminist  movement  is  a  step, 
we  trust,  in  that  direction. 

The  children  of  primitive  parents  inherited 
the  powers  of  brutes  together  with  a  few  higher 
characteristics.  Modern  children  inherit  from 
all  mankind — more  from  organized  society  than 
from  their  direct  progenitors.  The  children 
of  to-day  inherit  the  conquests  of  yesterday  a 
little  more  readily  than  yesterday's  defeats. 
That  is  the  hope  of  the  generations.  A  se- 
lective law,  working  through  the  mentality  of 
mankind,  seems  to  winnow  the  chaff  from  the 
wheat  of  time.  Thus  the  people  of  this  epoch 


THE   FEMINIST   MOVEMENT  159 

are  able  to  profit  by  the  social  consciousness 
of  epochs  past ;  and  the  social  consciousness  of 
to-day  will  be  modified,  expanded  and  passed 
on  to  the  children  of  to-morrow.  The  aim  of 
the  feminists  should  be  to  make  this  commun- 
istic soul  a  little  more  tender,  a  trifle  more  just, 
and  slightly  more  comprehensive  of  personal 
nature. 

Social  consciousness  sweeps  onward  like  a 
river  fed  by  many  streams.  This  does  not 
mean  a  corresponding  increase  of  individual  in- 
tellectuality. The  intellectual  growth  of  indi- 
viduals generally,  lags  behind  the  growth  of  the 
intellectuality  of  society.  The  general  level  of 
personal  intellectual  capacity  in  any  civilized 
nation  to-day  is  not  as  high  by  a  point  or  two 
as  it  was  at  the  best  period  of  Greek  civiliza- 
tion, over  two  thousand  years  ago.  Our  mod- 
ern gains  in  comfort  and  material  advancement 
are  owing  to  the  organization  of  a  remarkable 
quasi-personality,  or  common  mind  of  society. 
No  better  example  of  this  phenomenon  is  needed 
than  the  mental,  the  moral,  and  the  material  co- 
ordination shown  in  the  conduct  of  the  world's 
greatest  war. 

Our  heritage  from  society  may  be  likened  to 
a  ready-to-wear  garment  into  which  the  per- 
sonality of  the  child  is  molded  by  the  vague 
deity  that  presides  over  our  spiritual  nature 
and  material  environment,  both  more  or  less 


160       WOMAN   FROM   BONDAGE  TO   FREEDOM 

in  orderly  relationship.  That  is  to  say,  the 
child  inherits  adaptability;  it  is  born  with  a 
mind  capable  of  learning — a  mind  extremely 
sensitive  to  social  suggestion,  to  reflex  think- 
ing: thinking  in  terms  of  aggregation;  in  a 
word,  with  a  brain  capable  of  inductive  cerebra- 
tion, which  is  a  kind  of  mental  reverberation. 
Also  the  child  is  born  with  potential  initiative. 
As  the  initiative  becomes  active,  it  affects  its 
mental  environment  by  action  and  reaction  be- 
tween individual  minds.  Similar  ideas  and  like 
purposes  unite  to  produce  an  intenser  initiative 
that  is  at  once  impersonal  and  social  in  its  na- 
ture. If  it  were  not  for  this  fact,  society  once 
crystallized  would  remain  changeless;  classes 
used  to  bondage  would  remain  in  slavery  for- 
ever; classes  inured  to  degradation  would  ac- 
cept their  lot  as  the  "will  of  God";  and  there 
would  be  no  feminist  nor  any  other  humanist 
movement.  The  men  and  women  who  lifted 
hand  or  voice  to  make  society  better  would  be 
outlaws  in  perpetuity  as  they  now  are  during 
life,  or  until  society  has  had  time  to  see  its  er- 
ror. As  it  is,  all  rational  radicals,  all  reason- 
able reformers,  all  real  lovers  of  their  kind 
who  translate  their  love  into  deeds  are,  during 
their  lives,  usually  regarded  by  society  as 
criminals. 

The  sad  truth  of  this  social  phenomenon  has 
many  examples :  Christ  not  only  was  execrated 


THE   FEMINIST   MOVEMENT  161 

by  his  contemporaries,  but  he  was  shamefully 
murdered;  Lincoln  was  hated  and  traduced  al- 
most to  the  hour  of  his  assassination;  Thomas 
Paine  still  is  in  disgrace;  John  Brown  went 
to  the  gallows  as  a  criminal  lunatic;  Eobert  G. 
Ingersoll  was  despised  by  all  good  Christians 
during  his  life — slandered  and  misunderstood 
by  the  pious  since  his  death;  Eugene  V.  Debs 
perhaps  will  die  in  prison — calumniated  and 
traduced  by  the  very  men  and  women  whom  he 
loves  and  serves;  Margaret  Sanger's  righteous 
work  is  viciously  condemned  by  the  whole  Cath- 
olic church ;  Dr.  William  J.  Robinson,  American 
pioneer  in  the  movement  to  control  human  birth 
for  the  benefit  of  all  mankind — a  great  philoso- 
pher— one  of  the  superb  characters  of  our 
epoch — probably  is  doomed  to  petty  persecution 
all  his  days  by  pernicious  numbskulls ;  and  per- 
haps he  will  be  misunderstood  always — certain- 
ly by  vast  hordes  of  pious  imbeciles.  Wendell 
Phillips,  "William  Lloyd  Garrison,  Susan  B. 
Anthony,  Mary  Wollstonecraft,  Annie  Besant, 
Anna  Howard  Shaw,  and  thousands  of  others 
who  have  labored  and  sacrificed  themselves  to 
make  the  heart  a  little  more  tender,  the  mind  a 
little  broader,  and  to  bring  justice  a  little 
nearer,  were  unpopular  during  the  greater  part 
of  their  lives.  Contemporary  popularity  is  al- 
most a  badge  of  shame,  and  usually  it  is  the 
mark  of  mediocrity. 


162       WOMAN"   PROM   BONDAGE   TO    FREEDOM 

Although  the  child  is  molded  to  fit  the  clothes 
prepared  by  society,  some  kindly  law  working 
through  variation  and  diversity,  encourages 
personal  enterprise  and  quickens  individual  in- 
vention. Fortunately,  the  individual  may  con- 
tribute a  leavening  that  raises  the  level  of  the 
mass-mind.  As  all  persons  do  not  inherit 
alike,  all  can  not  render  equally.  The  masses 
live  by  prescriptive  rule,  and  think  in  terms 
of  imitation ;  but  they  have  a  communistic  spirit 
that  is  easily  touched  by  imagination  or  ro- 
mance ;  thus  the  mass-mind  may  be  aroused  by 
individuals  to  imitate  what  is  good,  exceptional 
and  rare,  or  wild  and  foolish.  All  propaganda 
is  based  on  this  fact,  even  the  most  pernicious. 
For  it  seems  to  be  in  the  individual  mind  that 
the  selective  factors  are  so  arranged  that  they 
have  the  power  of  co-ordinating  experience  both 
into  wisdom  and  wickedness.  The  individual 
assembles  scattered  racial  ideas  into  personal 
concepts.  He  invents,  and  society  profits  by 
his  invention.  An  idea  turns  into  machinery 
and  wealth,  into  art  and  science,  into  mercy  and 
the  love  of  justice. 

Social  consciousness  is  the  synthesis  of  dis- 
.similar  mental  habits,  dissimilar  fetishes,  sim- 
ilar ideals,  common  desires,  habitual  reactions, 
prevailing  longings,  similar  sensations,  estab- 
lished orders,  etc.  All  these  and  many  other 
factors  synthetically  unite  in  the  engine  of  ac- 


THE   FEMINIST   MOVEMENT  163 

tivity  that  makes  for  progress  not  only  but 
that  produces  the  awful  cataclysms  periodically 
shaking  civilization  and  threatening  society  it- 
self. Germany  has  taught  us  what  this  en- 
gine can  do  when  it  is  morally  idiotic  but  sci- 
entifically efficient.  Russia,  bids  us  to  beware. 
Capitalism,  both  friend  and  enemy  of  man,  has 
ravished  the  soul  of  civilization  whilst  building 
its  glittering  dome.  Bolshevism  has  drowned 
its  noblest  ideals  in  a  sea  of  blood.  Super- 
stition has  done  a  like  hideous  thing  in  the 
name  of  religion  whilst  erecting  splendid  tem- 
ples to  God.  One  need  not  reflect  long  to  see 
that  social  consciousness  easily  splits  up  into 
class-consciousness  readily  capable  of  running 
amuck ;  that  unless  the  mass-mind  is  dominated 
by  soul  and  lighted  by  reason,  its  dynamic  en- 
gine is  as  likely  to  drive  backward  as  forward ; 
and  that  it  has  indeed  very  often  in  history 
destroyed  much  of  the  good  work  that  man  has 
painfully  done;  for  its  blind  caprices  have  im- 
peded progress  for  centuries,  and  more  than 
once  dragged  us  back  into  barbarism. 

It  follows  that  the  introduction  of  feminism 
into  the  management  of  affairs  would  be  of  lit- 
tle advantage  to  civilization  if  woman's  head 
and  heart  brought  nothing  new  and  vivifying 
into  our  social  consciousness.  The  hopeful  fact 
however  that  woman  is  unlike  man,  yet  his 
equal  in  all  moral  and  intellectual  possibilities, 


164        WOMAN    FBOM    BONDAGE   TO    FKEEDOM 

justifies  the  experiment.  The  field  long  fal- 
low gathers  strength.  Fresh  psychic  energy 
should  be  capable  of  stimulating  sociologic 
growth  of  the  right  kind.  The  political  rights 
of  women,  wisely  exercised,  should  be  of  in- 
estimable service  in  the  government.  The  cre- 
ative ingenuity  of  women  should  help  us  to 
build  worthy  social  structures.  The  sensitive- 
ness of  womanhood  to  moral  principles  should 
be  a  soul  to  the  judiciary  in  its  deliberations, 
and  a  conscience  to  our  laws  in  their  making. 

Society  long  has  cogitated,  besides  its  ma- 
terial interests,  such  subjects  as  immortality, 
religion,  ethics,  art,  philosophy,  etc.;  but  the 
question  of  simple  justice  to  woman  and  child 
has  had,  relatively,  little  serious  attention.  The 
feminist  awakening,  as  it  is  called,  so  widely 
active  in  so  many  different  ways,  is  a  phenome- 
non of  social  conscience  at  work,  whereby  hu- 
manity may  be  induced  to  think  in  nascent  terms 
of  progress. 

Primitive  communities  accepted  the  subordi- 
nate position  of  woman  as  natural,  and  there- 
fore proper  to  her  sex.  There  were  many  rea- 
sons for  this,  some  of  which  have  been  men- 
tioned. In  a  general  way,  sociologic  influences 
of  an  inevitable  nature,  rather  than  rank  de- 
pravity of  the  male  liomo,  determined  her 
status.  Her  sex  has  made  her  dependent  on 
man  at  recurrent  times ;  she  was  subject  to  sue- 


THE   FEMINIST    MOVEMENT  165 

ceeding  periods  of  emotional  and  mental  in- 
ertia; she  was  ruled  by  superstition,  and  she 
was  bound  down  by  crude  conventions ;  she  ever 
was  more  slave  than  man  to  imitation  that,  from 
time  to  time,  arose  to  the  dignity  of  custom  and 
became  a  fashion;  fashions  founded  on  savage 
routine  increased  their  sway  over  her  as  the 
elements  of  docility  throve  in  her  mind. 

As  women  were  enslaved  by  the  psychology 
of  society  working  through  their  sex,  so  must 
they  be  liberated  by  the  same  means.  The  high 
tide  of  barbarism  with  its  synchronous  low  ebb 
of  ethical  invention  has  passed  we  hope  forever. 
"When  the  social  organism  is  of  a  low  order,  its 
rigidity  is  high ;  then  it  is  that  vicious  sugges- 
tion runs  rampant  and  progress  becomes  sta- 
tionary or  turns  backward.  The  feminist  move- 
ment really  has  more  intimate  and  vital  rela- 
tions with  the  psychology  of  society  than  with 
forms  of  government  and  material  welfare. 

The  most  important  problem  for  feminism  to 
consider,  is  that  of  sound  citizenship.  It  is  a 
poor  country  that  exchanges  health  of  body 
and  soul  for  commercial  wealth.  That  country 
is  richest  that  has  the  most  sound  citizens,  at 
once  able-bodied  and  spiritually  developed.  "We 
can  not  expect  robust  children  from  sickly  and 
over-worked  parents.  We  can  not  hope  for 
healthier  children  in  the  next  generation  unless 
we  improve  the  conditions  of  this.  "We  must 


166        WOMAX   FROM    BONDAGE   TO    FREEDOM 

not  leave  future  generations  wholly  to  chance, 
to  ignorant  whim,  to  brutal  passion.  The  ob- 
ligations we  owe  to  the  past  make  us  debtor 
to  the  future.  "We  can  not  discharge  our  debts 
to  the  dead,  but  our  spiritual  wealth  and  phys- 
ical vigor  we  can  pass  on  to  those  who  are 
about  to  live. 

If  men  are  blind,  women  at  least  should  see 
that  the  obligations  of  society  to  the  pregnant 
woman  are  definite  and  clear — as  definite  and 
clear  as  the  duties  of  the  expectant  mother  are 
to  her  unborn  child — duties  that  were  sanely 
valued  by  the  Chinese  many  centuries  ago.  It 
is  over  a  thousand  years  since  Madam  Cheng 
wrote:  ''Even  before  birth  his  education  may 
begin ;  and,  therefore,  the  prospective  mother  of 
old,  when  lying  down,  lay  straight ;  when  sitting 
down,  sat  upright;  and  when  standing,  stood 
erect.  She  would  not  taste  strange  flavors,  nor 
have  anything  to  do  with  spiritism ;  if  her  food 
were  not  cut  straight,  she  would  not  eat  of  it,  and 
if  her  mat  were  not  straight,  she  would  not  sit 
upon  it.  She  would  not  look  upon  any  objec- 
tionable sight,  nor  handle  any  impure  thing. 
.  .  .  Therefore,  her  sons  were  upright  and 
eminent  for  their  talents  and  virtues ;  such  was 
the  result  of  antenatal  training". 

It  is  commonly  known  that  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands of  expectant  mothers,  so  called,  are  sur- 
rounded by  the  saddest  of  conditions,  and  that 


THE   FEMINIST   MOVEMENT  167 

they  are  forced  to  live  the  most  unhygienic 
of  lives.  What  is  society  doing  for  these  wom- 
en? Very  little  compared  with  what  should  be 
done.  The  philanthropist  contents  himself  with 
giving  a  little  of  his  ill-gotten  gains  for  the 
posthumous  perpetuation  of  his  worthless  name. 
The  charitable  organizations  pay  their  officers 
fat  salaries  to  insult  the  self-respect  of  help- 
less mothers — and  society  continues  the  dance. 
Once  we  become  civilized,  charity  will  be  re- 
garded as  an  impertinent  and  childish  infamy. 
"When  all  human  beings  shall  possess  their 
rights,  they  will  have  no  need  of  charity. 

It  is  the  destiny  of  womanhood  to  solve  many 
important  problems,  among  which  is  that  of 
marriage — for  marriage  embraces  more  than 
things  sexual.  "Woman  never  will  shed  her 
many  shackles  until  she  has  achieved  economic 
independence,  unrestricted  activity,  and  birth 
control.  When  she  has  won  this  freedom,  she 
will  rise  to  the  dignity  of  a  thinking  being  strong 
enough  to  safeguard  ,her  own  conscience  con- 
cerning her  freedom  of  choice  in  love  and  in 
motherhood. 


WOMAN  SUFFRAGE 


T  is  too  late  to  argue  for  or  against 
the  franchise  alike  for  men  and 
women — for  suffrage  is  the  badge  of 
all  our  tribe.  The  right  of  women  to 
have  a  voice  in  government,  no  longer  need  be 
discussed  since  the  exercise  of  that  right  vir- 
tually is  in  their  control.  The  fight  was  long 
and  bitter.  It  developed  many  interesting 
phases  and  not  a  few  picturesque  personages. 
It  seems  strange  now  that  the  fight  was  nec- 
essary. 

The  backbone  of  woman  suffrage  is  the  dig- 
nity of  womanhood.  "Woman's  spiritual  nature 
is  a  sacrament  that  could  not  be  profaned  for- 
ever, nor  could  it  be  obscured  by  any  degree  of 
infernal  cleverness.  The  whole  issue  of 
woman's  enfranchisement  centers  in  her  per- 
sonal dignity  as  a  human  being,  both  intelligent 
and  responsible.  Every  other  consideration  or 
contention  is  subservient  to  this  imperious  fact. 

No  sensible  person  believed  that  the  equal 
franchise,  in  itself,  would  solve  our  sorry  eco- 
nomic scheme.  Yet  no  one  doubted  that  it  would 
help  to  make  some  conditions  better,  since  noth- 
ing could  very  well  make  them  worse.  Every- 

169 


170       WOMAN   FROM   BONDAGE   TO   FREEDOM 

body  knows  that  our  democracy  has  its  defects ; 
and  no  one  can  be  cock-sure  that  our  system  of 
suffrage  is  the  best  possible  basis  of  govern- 
ment. Nevertheless,  the  ballot  is  the  best  in- 
strument of  its  kind  that  has  been  devised,  and 
one  as  well  suited  to  woman's  use  as  to  man's. 

The  educational  benefits  and  the  governing 
powers  of  suffrage  are  about  equal.  What  may 
be  said  for  and  against  the  one,  may  be  said 
for  and  against  the  other  with  equal  reason. 
Until  the  civic  conscience  of  men  becomes  alert 
through  education,  the  voting  power  of  women 
should  be  helpful  to  society,  because  women 
may  be  expected  to  react  as  quickly  to  civic  as 
they  do  to  other  needs.  Yet  the  suffrage  ques- 
tion, economically  considered,  is  a  minor  one  in 
the  feminist  movement;  but  so  far  as  decency 
or  the  dignity  of  womanhood  is  concerned,  it  is 
a  major  question  that  could  not  be  ignored. 

The  question  of  superiority  of  either  sex  did 
not  enter  the  core  of  the  problem  at  all — hardly 
even  the  question  of  equality.  The  broad  issue 
rather  embraced  the  supplemental  union  of  the 
natural  differences  between  the  sexes  for  the 
highest  good  of  both.  During  the  long  fight 
many  irrelevant  contentions  were  raised  by  the 
champions  on  either  side.  One  of  these  con- 
tentions was  that  of  the  emotionalism,  com- 
monly ascribed  to  women.  Of  course,  if  society 
had  to  be  governed  by  either  emotionalism  or 


WOMAN   SUFFRAGE  171 

rationalism,  the  choice  would  fall  to  reason.  It 
so  happened  however  that  this  issue  was  a  man 
of  straw.  Besides,  it  has  been  demonstrated 
that  the  ruling  powers  of  society  perform  best 
their  functions  when  reason  is  tempered  with 
emotion.  Indeed  the  emotive  and  the  rational 
phases  of  the  woman's  suffrage  movement 
could  not  be  considered  separately  any  more 
than  love  and  hope  can  be  separated  in  our 
thought.  There  always  will  be  both  men  and 
women  more  sensitive  to  the  emotional  than  to 
the  economic  stress,  just  as  there  always  will  be 
others  of  both  sexes  engrossed  with  the  eco- 
nomic problems  of  society.  It  was  futile  there- 
fore to  argue  whether  woman  was  disqualified 
for  full  citizenship  by  her  emotional  tempera- 
ment, since  she  is  possessed  of  reason  as  surely 
as  man  has  emotion. 

Another  objection  raised  against  woman  suf- 
frage, was  woman's  primary  obligation  to 
motherhood.  That  objection  to  her  civicism 
really  was  an  argument  for  it.  Woman's  sec- 
ondary obligation  to  follow  the  occupations  of 
producer  in  the  industrial,  the  scientific,  and 
the  aesthetic  fields,  also  worked  in  favor  of  her 
enfranchisement.  Since  motherhood  makes  the 
male  necessary,  and  since  females  have  been 
driven  to  industrialism  for  livelihood,  a  politi- 
cal union  of  men  and  women  has  become  almost 
as  necessary  to  society  as  the  sexual  union  al- 


172       WOMAN   FROM   BONDAGE   TO   FREEDOM 

ways  has  been  to  the  race.  The  results  of  sex- 
ual union  automatically  take  care  of  themselves. 
Women  fit  for  motherhood,  having  opportuni- 
ties for  marriage,  will  supply  the  generations. 
"Women  unfit  for  motherhood,  or  having  no  op- 
portunities to  marry,  will  not  idly  languish,  but 
they  will  engage  in  pursuits  useful  to  them- 
selve  and  needful  to  society.  Therefore,  both 
the  married  and  the  unmarried  women  had  a 
right  to  the  ballot  that  could  not  be  denied  them 
with  decency. 

As  human  beings,  women  are  going  to  make 
the  fool  mistakes  that  are  common  to  mankind ; 
and  they  will  use  the  ballot  as  human  beings 
use  and  misuse  everything  they  handle.  In 
that  respect  we  do  not  expect  them  to  differ 
from  the  men ;  but  as  human  fallibility  has  not 
been  a  sufficient  reason  for  men  to  deny  them- 
selves the  ballot,  it  was  not  deemed  a  valid 
reason  for  withholding  votes  from  women. 

If  it  were  feasible  to  disfranchise  the  igno- 
rant and  the  vicious,  it  would  be  desirable  to  do 
so;  and  if  it  were  practicable  to  admit  only 
wise  and  good  women  to  the  polls,  it  would  be 
well ;  but  as  we  have  no  such  selective  means  at 
hand  for  the  women  more  than  for  the  men 
voters,  we  shall  have  to  rely  on  the  slowly  awak- 
ening civic  conscience,  on  the  spread  of  educa- 
tion in  political  economy,  and  on  the  develop- 


WOMAN    SUFFKAGE  173 

ment  of  intellectual  eSSciency  among  women,  as 
among  men,  to  make  them  fit  electors. 

Man's  opposition  to  woman's  possession  of 
civic  and  political  rights,  was  mean  enough ;  but 
the  attitude  of  the  women  antis,  was  meaner. 
The  women  who  asked  for  enfranchisement  did 
not  propose  to  force  other  women  to  vote  who 
did  not  wish  to  do  so — although  it  might  be  only 
political  wisdom  to  penalize  the  refusal  of  any 
reputable  citizen  to  cast  a  ballot. 

Suffrage  has  not  interfered  with  woman's 
interest  in  the  home ;  it  has  done  no  harm  to  the 
instincts  of  motherhood,  and  is  not  likely  to  do 
any.  Voting  has  not  lessened  the  sexual  attrac- 
tion of  woman.  Civicism  will  interfere  with  her 
womanly  qualities  no  more  than  will  an  athletic 
training  or  a  scientific  schooling.  The  kind  of 
woman  that  a  normal  man  likes  best,  is  one  most 
fully  developed  of  body  and  soul;  the  woman 
he  likes  least,  is  the  manly  woman,  and  the 
creature  most  despised  by  both  sexes,  is  the 
ladylike  man. 

With  the  advent  of  woman  suffrage,  ap- 
proaches by  another  step  the  era  when  woman 
shall  be  free  from  the  curse  of  drunkenness 
thrust  upon  her  and  her  children  by  man — when 
womanhood  and  manhood  shall  share  equally 
in  the  conquests  of  humanity — when  marriage 
shall  rise  above  the  level  of  a  commercial  trans- 
action, or  a  mere  sensual  license — when  relig- 


174       iWOMAJST   FROM   BONDAGE   TO   FREEDOM 

ion  shall  not  uphold  the  husband's  sexual  grati- 
fication at  the  expense  of  the  wife's  self-respect 
— when,  in  short,  the  subserviency  of  women 
shall  not  be  considered  as  the  will  of  the  Lord — 
when  "the  man  of  God"  and  the  man  of  the 
world  will  be  regarded  equally  as  enemies  of 
civilization  whenever  they  shall  attempt  to 
frame  iniquity  into  laws  that  oppress  women, 
or  to  apologize  for  such  laws  already  in  exist- 
ence. 

The  cruelty  of  man's  political  dominance 
over  woman  was  well  shown  in  classic  Roman 
times.  Women  were  so  humiliated  in  that 
vaunted  era  that  many  sought  escape  by  sui- 
cide. What  relief  was  offered  by  the  Roman 
Senate?  A  law  was  passed  -to  the  effect  that 
isuicides  should  have  their  naked  bodies  exposed 
in  the  street.  It  did  not  occur  to  the  Senators 
that  it  might  be  better  to  legislate  some  abate- 
ment of  the  harsh  conditions  that  made  death 
by  suicide  preferable  to  living  degradation ;  but 
the  Senators  thought  to  punish  the  final  desper- 
ate expression  of  wretchedness  by  attacking  the 
virtue  of  modesty.  This  legislative  enactment 
did  not  seek  "to  make  life  more  attractive,  but 
death  more  repulsive".  Would  this  have  hap- 
pened in  Rome,  we  ask  ourselves,  if  women  had 
possessed  the  right  to  vote? 

During  the  heat  of  battle  for  woman  suffrage, 
many  odd  issues  were  raised  by  the  opposition. 


WOMAN   SUFFRAGE  175 

One  of  the  most  stupid  was,  that  centuries  of 
oppression  had  unfitted  women  for  the  exercise 
of  this  political  right.  Fortunately  for  us  all, 
the  effects  of  use  and  non-use  of  political  rights 
are  not  transmitted  to  offspring;  but  if  they 
were,  the  effects  of  disuse  would  not  be  inher- 
ited by  one  sex  alone,  since  women  bear  sons  as 
well  as  daughters.  Happily  also,  daughters  no 
more  than  sons  inherit  the  effects  of  their 
mothers'  deprivations.  Individuals  transmit 
acquired  character,  capacity,  capability.  For 
example,  no  linguist,  however  proficient,  can 
transmit  his  linguistic  accomplishments  to  his 
offspring.  His  child,  like  that  of  the  unlettered 
peasant,  must  begin  by  learning  the  alphabet  or 
its  equivalent.  The  child  can  inherit  only  such 
characteristics  as  those  which  enabled  the 
parent  to  become,  for  instance,  a  great  linguist 
or  a,  great  musician. 

Those  who  fought  the  movement  for  the 
emancipation  of  woman  from  economic  and  po- 
litical bondage,  were  slow  to  understand  the 
plea  that  encircled  the  earth;  they  persisted  in 
shouting  inanities  such  as  the  Almighty's  "de- 
signs", revealed  by  woman's  "deeply  im- 
planted instincts",  etc.;  they  did  not  under- 
stand that  woman's  instincts  were  implanted 
by  the  hard  conditions  of  her  lot ;  and  they  were 
blind  to  the  absurdity  of  making  distinctions 
without  differences;  they  never  questioned 


176       WOMAN   PROM   BONDAGE   TO   FREEDOM 

their  own  knowledge  of  the  divine  will,  nor  did 
they  wonder  how  it  happened  that  they  had 
been  favored  above  others  with  this  knowledge. 

Another  silly  objection  to  equal  suffrage,  was 
the  implication  that  woman  wished  to  be  man 
because  she  asked  for  equal  consideration  un- 
der the  law,  equal  opportunity  to  live  as  a  self- 
respecting  citizen  of  the  state,  equal  chance  to 
be  useful  and  happy.  Her  desire  to  vote  was 
no  sign  that  she  wished  to  be  a  butcher,  or  even 
a  soldier.  If  killing  must  continue,  there  are 
sausages  to  be  made  at  home  whilst  men  do  the 
sticking  afield.  The  women  who  wish  to  vote 
are  not  clamoring  to  wallow  in  the  political 
mudholes  made  slimy  by  men.  The  women 
who  can  not  trust  themselves  in  politics  need 
not  enter  that  field  merely  because  they  have 
the  right  to  do  so ;  but  they  are  extremely  rude 
and  unreasonable  when  they  try  to  keep  other 
women  out  who  wish  to  enter. 

Every  right  is  coupled  with  a  duty.  The 
right  to  live  and  be  happy  is  yoked  to  the  duty 
to  let  others  live  and  be  happy.  The  only  "  di- 
vine right"  of  kings,  as  Carlyle  says,  "is  the 
divine  right  to  live  as  kingly  men".  The  rights 
of  women  are  the  duties  of  men;  and  " votes  for 
women"  is  a  draft  by  the  future,  the  first  in- 
stalments of  which  we  are  now  beginning  to 
pay. 

The  conscience  of  society  begins  to  feel  that 


WOMAN   SUFFRAGE  177 

if  woman  may  own  property  or  possess  any 
other  civic  right  or  any  political  privilege, 
there  is  no  reason  why  she  should  not  possess 
all  civic  rights  and  all  political  privileges 
equally  with  man;  that  if  laws  are  made  for 
the  decent  treatment  of  expectant  mothers,  it 
is  reasonable  that  the  mothers  themselves 
should  have  some  voice  in  the  making  of  those 
laws.  Society  is  beginning  to  see  that  if  work- 
ingmen  should  have  political  rights,  so  should 
prospective  mothers  have  them,  for  they  do  the 
most  important  of  the  world's  work.  These 
women  not  only  work  with  their  hands,  but  with 
every  fibre  of  their  pulsating  hearts,  with 
every  drop  of  their  blood,  with  every  organ,  and 
with  every  breath.  Surely  society  is  justified 
in  allowing  these  workingwomen  an  equal  right 
with  workingmen  to  vote  for  legislative  amel- 
ioration of  their  lot.  Those  who  are  engaged 
in  the  vital  industry  of  the  race  should  not  be 
subordinate  politically  to  those  who  work  for 
the  material  interests  of  society,  or  to  fill  the 
coffers  of  our  lords  of  finance. 

There  are  many  opportunities  for  women 
with  ballots  to  show  their  fitness  to  advance 
civilization.  There  is  the  old  red  mark  of  Cain 
on  our  statute  books.  The  votes  of  women  can 
wipe  that  out.  Capital  punishment  and  civiliza- 
tion can  not  exist  in  the  same  community. 
Nothing  can  be  more  demoralizing  to  society, 


178       .WOMAN   FROM   B01O>AGE   TO   FREEDOM 

more  hideous  in  its  blight  on  the  growing 
morals  of  children  than  the  cold-blooded  mur- 
ders committed  by  the  state,  and  graphically  ex- 
ploited by  the  public  press.  Voting  women  can 
remove  this  stain  as  easily  as  they  have  oblit- 
erated the  corner  saloon ;  and  they  can  help  to 
enact  other  measures  to  satisfy  justice. 

There  is  something  we  may  yet  learn  from 
the  queen-bee  of  the  rights  of  motherhood,  of 
the  uselessness  of  the  blind  and  selfish  father- 
hood that  deprives  children  of  the  support 
rightfully  theirs.  There  are  two  lessons  to  be 
learned :  the  ancient  lesson  of  life  that  the  bees 
can  teach  us;  and  the  more  recent  lesson  of 
soulfulness  that  we  must  teach  ourselves. 
Motherhood  may  be  expected  to  teach  this  les- 
son, and  to  enforce  it  by  helping  to  crystallize  it 
in  our  laws.  From  one  view-point,  motherhood 
is  the  largest  interrogation-point  that  con- 
fronts the  mind's  eye.  The  potentiality  of 
motherhood  through  suffrage — one  of  the  many 
avenues  of  outlet — no  longer  could  be  ignored 
by  the  body  politic. 

"We  do  not  want  the  influence  of  woman  suf- 
frage to  encourage  mountebanks  to  multiply 
our  dogmas.  "We  have  creeds  enough  and 
enough  religious  precepts ;  and  already  we  have 
wasted  enough  time  in  useless  prayer  to  feed 
the  whole  world  by  productive  labor.  "What  we 
need  is  practical  sense  enough  to  be  guided  by 


WOMAN    SUFFRAGE  179 

equitable  principles.  Caste,  aristocracy,  class ! 
We  always  have  had  more  than  enough  of  these. 
We  crave  something  now  that  will  broaden  life, 
something  that  will  enhance  our  happiness,  and 
ennoble  our  being.  We  want  to  civilize  both  the 
rich  and  the  poor.  We  should  like  to  see  the 
candles  of  spiritual  enlightenment  burning  on 
the  altars  of  the  church — the  cobwebs  brushed 
off  our  statute  books — the  lights  of  liberty  for 
man,  woman,  and  child  burning  in  every  home. 
Few  of  us  are  enthusiastic  enough  to  believe 
that  woman  suffrage  can  do  all  these  hallowed 
things;  yet  there  is  no  doubt  it  can  help  in  a 
thousand  ways.  For  example,  iti;can  help  to 
modify  the  marriage  laws  by  injecting  them 
with  sensible  eugenic  principles.  That  can  be 
done  without  establishing  huaaan  stud-farms, 
or  neglecting  the  psychology  ol  love  and  our 
moral  nature.  If  we  wish  science  to  improve 
heredity,  to  temper  environment,  'to  provide 
nurture,  and  to  supervise  the  hygiene  of  body 
and  soul,  then  science  must  have  the  support 
of  our  laws.  If  clean  sentiment  is  to  keep  its 
seat  in  the  soul,  then  men  and  women  together 
should  express  tliis  sentiment  by  means  of  the 
ballot  whenever  possible.  For  it  should  be 
borne  in  mind  that  the  ballot  is  the  voice  of 
preference,  a  symbol  of  thought,  the  expression 
of  a  wish ;  moreover,  as  an  instrument  of  desire, 
it  is  essentially  feminine  rather  than  masculine. 


180        WOMAN   FEOM   BONDAGE   TO    FREEDOM 

The  ballot  is  an  implement  lately  devised  to 
be  used  in  .the  art  of  living.  It  is  a  very  simple 
little  device  which,  if  handled  wisely,  leads  to 
large  results.  This  implement,  guided  by  the 
sensitive  intuitive  skill  of  womanhood,  should 
be  effective.  The  supreme  art  of  living  aims  to 
enhance  the  good,  to  ennoble  the  commonplace, 
and  to  intensify  the  personal  spirit  to  an  imper- 
sonal or  altruistic  degree.  Back  of  (error,  this 
art  models  a  grotesque  grin  on  tie  face  of  per- 
ception; it  clothes  comedy  ^rith  tragic  garb; 
and  it  strips  tragedy  of  its  farcical  embellish- 
ments. As  we  are  only  beginning  to  acquire 
some  of  its  technic,  it  i-s  well  that  we  shall  have 
thenceforward  the  help  of  women. 

In  the  long  run.  the  soul  infallibly  will  take 
care  of  itself — oaly  its  appurtenances  ever  are 
in  danger;  but  in  the  taking  care  of  itself,  the 
soul  is  apt  to  wander,  and  liable  to  incur  pro- 
digious expense.  Art  is  the  means  of  forestall- 
ing this  expense.  When  we  apply  the  art  of 
living-,  we  discover  that  its  technic  involves  the 
whole  field  of  human  activity :  humble  toil,  daily 
n?istakes,  clear  thought,  high  feeling,  science, 
mechanics,  ethics,  politics,  philosophy,  econom- 
ics, religion,  and  the  rest.  Each  of  these  in  its 
own  way  is  a  worker-bee  that  contributes  to  the 
architecture  and  the  life  of  the  hive,  which  is 
the  world,  whose  queen  is  the  human  soul  brood- 
ing her  dreams  of  the  future.  One  sex  standing 


WOMAN   SUFFRAGE  181 

alone  is  almost  as  impotent  as  a  detached  social 
unit.  Individuals  must  keep  in  harmony  with 
the  trend  of  the  race  or  perish.  The  sexes  must 
keep  in  harmony  or  the  race  will  perish.  There 
is  no  room  in  the  scheme  of  things  for  anarchy. 
The  race-rhythm  is  elemental  and  inexorable; 
and  to  this  rhythm  art  attunes  itself. 

Enlightened  universal  co-operation  between 
the  racial  units  is  out  of  the  question  for  ages 
to  come.  The  wholesome  endeavors  of  some 
must  be  cancelled  by  the  harmful  activities  of 
others.  Good  and  evil  oppose  one  another  in 
the  balances;  slowly  through  the  epochs  must 
the  scales  rise  and  dip.  Aside  from  religious 
precepts,  and  despite  philosophic  doubt,  the 
good,  it  is  hoped,  gradually  augments,  and  if 
so,  it  must  predominate  eventually  over  evil. 
The  statistical  method  of  observation  indicates 
that  good  is  a  constructive  element,  so  to  speak, 
in  the  psychology  of  life.  If  it  were  otherwise 
— if  good  were  relative  merely,  and  the  tend- 
ency of  psychology,  evil  and  destructive — the 
race  would  have  perished  long  ago. 

We  may  be  sure  that  the  racial  trend  is  to- 
ward well-being.  In  primordial  epochs  the 
trend  was  subconscious  and  slow.  Only  since 
mankind  developed  society,  and  society  devel- 
oped consciousness,  and  consciousness  devel- 
oped conscience,  has  progress  become  acceler- 
ated. The  means  of  intensifying  the  conscious- 


182       /WOMAN   FROM   BONDAGE   TO   FREEDOM 

ness  of  society  to  the  effects  of  good  and  evil, 
therefore,  become  more  and  more  important; 
for  by  these  means  the  soul  is  nurtured.  Thus 
correctives  and  checks  are  valuable  social 
tonics,  and  as  useful  in  their  way  as  the  various 
ethical  stimuli  are  in  their  way.  The  ballot  is 
an  effective  inhibition,  the  use  of  which  is  es- 
pecially suitable  to  women. 

It  is  a  significant  fact  that  during  all  the 
rumpus  raised  over  woman  suffrage,  no  one 
formulated  a  valid  argument  against  it.  So- 
ciety seemed  dimly  to  recognize  that  women  not 
only  had  a  right  to  vote,  but  that  the  exercise 
of  that  right  was  necessary  to  a  complete  wom- 
anhood. And  why?  Because,  second  only  to 
the  dignity  of  woman's  personality,  is  her  im- 
perative duty  to  co-operate  with  man  in  every 
way  possible  for  the  betterment  of  human  be- 
ings, present  and  to  come ;  because,  if  she  is  not 
man's  full  partner  in  all  human  rights  and  priv- 
ileges, she  lacks  by  so  much  the  power  of  co- 
operation spiritually  and  therefore  materially; 
because,  if  woman  is  not  fit  to  vote,  she  is  not 
fit  to  be  wife  and  mother.  The  fewer  rights  pos- 
sessed, the  more  one  is  hampered.  The  civil- 
ized person  must  use  for  the  benefit  of  society, 
not  only  every  means  at  hand  but  other  means 
must  be  invented  as  new  needs  arise.  The  spir- 
itually minded  must  use  the  eyes  of  the  soul 
even  more  than  the  eyes  of  the  body;  for  the 


WOMAN   SUTFRAGB 

world  that  the  civilized  person  sees  does  not 
exist  to  the  savage.  No  valid  argument  was 
raised  against  woman  suffrage,  because1  no  one 
can  argue  against  co-operation  and  good  health 
by  preaching  anarchy  and  extolling  the  bless- 
ings of  disease. 

The  Crusades  gave  to  Europe  the  advantages 
of  foreign  travel ;  the  result  was  new  ideas  and 
a  broader  horizon.  Following  the  long  period 
of  fanaticism,  came  a  reaction  that  slowly  im- 
proved the  condition  of  woman  in  society.  Art 
was  first  to  respond:  minstrelsy  began  to  sing; 
the  trouvere,  in  the  langue  d'o'il,  sang  for  the 
sake  of  the  story ;  the  troubadour,  in  the  langue 
d'oc,  for  the  sake  of  lilting  music;  for  the  spirit 
of  Provence,  inherent  in  her  beautiful  language, 
was  born  to  express  above  all  else  wonder  and 
romance.  The  Chansons  d 'Amour,  de  Geste, 
and  the  influence  of  the  Minnesanger,  all  aided 
however  indirectly,  the  bettering  of  woman's 
condition.  Love  and  generous  deeds  were  cele- 
brated until  chivalry  blossomed  into  flower, 
even  although  the  flower  was  unlovely  com- 
pared with  others  that  we  know. 

Then  came  the  printing  press,  woman's  best 
friend,  her  liberator  and  savior.  Through  the 
work  of  this  marvelous  engine  she  shall 
achieve  full  possession  of  all  her  rights,  albeit 
the  time  is  far-off.  For  the  publishers  them- 
selves will  have  to  be  emancipated  from  the  per- 


184       WOMAN"   FROM   BONDAGE  TO    FEEEDOM 

nicious  influence  of  capital  dedicated  to  special 
interests  rather  than  the  general  good.  We  all 
know  very  well  that  our  publishing  houses  for 
the  most  part,  like  our  institutions  of  higher 
education,  are  so  rankly  commercial  that  they 
are  slaves  to  the  powers  supplying  them  with 
capital  when  the  pickings  are  lean. 

The  mind  of  woman  is  becoming  free,  and 
her  soul  is  nearing  emancipation.  She  is  think- 
ing and  expressing  her  thoughts — as  usual. 
She  is  growing  tired  of  silly  tales,  and  she  no 
longer  is  afraid  of  the  bears  that  frighten  little 
children.  The  religious  bugaboo  will  eease  in 
time  to  strike  terror  to  her  heart.  She  now  de- 
mands what  naturally  belongs  to  her,  and  she 
sensibly  rejects  what  was  unnaturally  thrust 
upon  her.  She  still  admires  muscle  in  man,  but 
she  likes  to  see  it  associated  with  mind.  She 
still  is  attracted  by  military  garb — still  de- 
bauched by  militarism  as  by  some  other  isms ; 
but  she  will  grow  out  of  her  weaknesses  sooner 
or  later.  She  is  beginning  to  prefer  opportun- 
ity to  flattery,  justice  to  charity.  She  no  longer 
is  satisfied  with  the  crusts  and  crumbs  of 
knowledge,  nor  with  the  petty  slaveries  entailed 
by  our  marriage  system.  She  would  rather 
stand  alone  than  lean  on  a  broken  reed.  She  is 
brave  enough  to  bear  the  burdens  of  this  world, 
and  she  will  be  courageous  enough  to  meet  the 
fortunes  of  the  next,  if  there  be  one,  without 


WOMAN   SUFFRAGE  185 

the  services  of  the  clergy.  Eventually  she  will 
rid  herself  of  all  the  divers  breeds  of  priestly 
parasites, — cleansing  her  mind  of  sacerdotal 
filth.  Then  she  will  refuse  politely  but  firmly  to 
make  popes  of  books  or  men;  for  she  shall  be 
free  to  think  and  to  speak,  to  love  and  to  be 
loved,  to  bear  a  babe  within  marriage  or  without 
by  the  man  of  her  choice  as  conscientiously  as 
she  now  votes. 

I  can  understand  the  reason  why  woman  suf- 
frage was  not  a  sizzling  issue  to  some  of  the 
well-conditioned  childless  wives,  to  some  mil- 
lionaires' old-maid  daughters,  to  some  "rich 
ladies"  in  pursuit  of  sensations,  nor  even  to 
some  well-to-do  mothers  happily  occupied  with 
the  home.  Many  such  women  get  along  very 
well  without  the  ballot.  In  their  several  ways 
they  know  the  usual  happiness  and  sorrow 
that  must  come  to  all.  Suffrage  could  not  add 
to  their  happiness  nor  take  from  their  sorrow. 
If  the  bounds  of  womanhood  reached  no  far- 
ther, equal  suffrage  would  not  matter. 

As  it  happens  however  there  is  another  class 
of  women  here  in  the  West  as  widely  separated 
from  their  more  fortunate  sisters  as  night  from 
day.  They  are  the  fruitful  wives  of  the  city's 
poor.  These  women  feel  most  the  evils  of  the 
corrupt  ballot  and  the  need  of  sympathetic  suf- 
frage. For  it  is  these  wives  and  mothers  who 
bear  the  heaviest  burdens  of  our  economic  life ; 


186       WOMAN   FROM   BONDAGE   TO   FREEDOM 

they  must  fight  the  hardest  battles  with  the 
least  hope  and  the  poorest  ammunition.  Cease- 
lessly they  must  fight  to  live ;  continually  they 
are  confronted  by  their  relentless  enemies :  pov- 
erty, disease,  and  corruption  in  every  form. 
Those  who  are  lucky  enough  to  have  the  wages 
of  a  husband  for  help,  yet  have  greater  diffi- 
culties to  overcome  than  he  who  found  the  job 
and  earned  the  unleavened  dough.  Every  ex- 
penditure must  be  calculated  to  a  nicety,  if  the 
family  is  to  hold  together  even  in  fair  weather, 
to  say  nothing  of  the  storms  when  sickness  and 
death  and  no  work  are  the  unwelcome  guests. 
There  are  millions  of  these  women  fighting  in 
every  degree  of  misery,  in  every  form  of  de- 
privation, in  the  most  unsanitary  environment 
and  hygienic  neglect.  Have  these  women  a 
right  to  vote,  or  should  that  privilege  be  con- 
served for  the  politician  under  the  control  of 
the  landlords,  the  sweatshop  bosses,  the  food 
profiteers,  and  the  scallywags  of  wealth,  power, 
and  position? 

No  one  but  a  savage  would  imagine  that  these 
women  have  the  interests  of  their  children  less 
at  heart  than  their  more  fortunate  sisters,  or 
that  the  ethical  principle  is  less  vital  because 
it  throbs  in  their  harrowed  souls.  Such  women 
as  these  need  the  ballot,  and  their  need  is  their 
right.  Society  does  them  scant  justice  in  per- 
mitting them  to  try  to  better  their  sad  lot  by  the 


WOMAN   SUFFBAGE  187 

ballot.  I  believe  in  these  women.  I  believe  they 
should  have  a  chance  to  make  life  easier  and 
better  for  themselves,  and  richer  for  their 
children.  That  reason  alone  should  justify 
woman  suffrage.  "For  the  dew  of  its  birth  is 
the  womb  of  the  morning." 


THE  ETHICS  OF  MARRIAGE,  ETC. 

ARRIAGE  naturally  polygamous 
under  the  tribal  conditions  of  one 
time,  becomes  as  naturally  polyan- 
drous  in  other  circumstances  at  an- 
other time,  or  at  the  same  time.  For  things 
are  perceived  to  be  good  or  bad  according  to 
circumstances.  Indeed  somewhere  in  the  world, 
marriage  always  is  both  polygamous  and  poly- 
androus,  according  to  environmental  pressure 
and  internal  expansion — according  to  need, 
habit,  or  custom.  Montaigne  keenly  observed 
that  the  laws  of  conscience,  which  we  pretend  to 
believe  are  derived  from  nature,  really  proceed 
from  custom. 

Assuming  that  group-marriage  was  first,  po- 
lygamy and  polyandry  may  be  regarded  as  in- 
termediary steps  leading  to  monogamy.  This 
form  of  marriage,  although  the  latest  and  in 
many  respects  the  best,  is  not  necessarily  final. 
If  the  sexes  were  equally  divided,  and  if  human 
nature  were  a. little  nearer  perfect,  monogamy 
would  seem  to  be  ideal.  It  fosters  the  virtues 
of  the  fireside,  it  stabilizes  the  home,  increasing 
the  cordial  solidarity  of  family-life ;  it  harmon- 

189 


190       [WOMAN   FROM   BONDAGE   TO   FREEDOM 

izes  with  the  longings  of  womanhood  in  its 
flower.  For  woman  at  her  best  craves  prece- 
dence and  she  thrives  on  preference.  Not  only 
that,  she  scrutinizes  the  manner  of  man's  at- 
tentions to  her  more  than  she  tries  to  divine  the 
real  essence  of  his  intentions.  The  reasons  for 
this  are  deeply  rooted  in  the  very  life  of  the 
race.  She  discriminates  between  the  value  of 
a  present  and  the  personal  compliment  it  im- 
plies. Personal  attention — that  is  to  say,  the 
expression  of  sentiment  with  its  thousand 
tongues — she  values  above  everything  else.  In 
sentiment  she  is  a  monogamist  even  when  poly- 
andric  in  practice. 

But  with  all  tha+  may  be  said  for  monogamy, 
a  question  remains  in  the  minds  of  some  think- 
ers whether  polyandry,  had  it  been  general, 
would  not  have  freed  woman,  many  centuries 
ago,  to  the  extent  at  least  that  polygamy  kept 
her  in  bondage.  Certain  it  is  that  neither  polyg- 
amy nor  monogamy,  by  itself,  has  done  much 
for  the  freedom  and  the  spiritual  elevation  of 
woman.  On  the  contrary,  these  two  forms  of 
marriage  have  been  at  the  root  of  innumerable 
varieties  of  violence  and  cruelty,  including 
slavery  and  prostitution.  If  we  leave  out  of 
marriage  the  spirituality  of  union,  so  uncom- 
monly found  in  it,  one  form  is  about  as  degrad- 
ing as  another.  Woman  never  can  hope  to  at- 
tain her  higher  spiritual  possibilities  until  she 


THE  ETHICS   OF   MAKBIAGE,   ETC.  191 

achieves  freedom.  So  long  as  she  is  not  eco- 
nomically free  to  marry  nor  legally  free  to 
divorce,  she  is  held  in  loathsome  restraint.  Her 
noblest  enchantment  relies  on  her  freedom  of 
choice  to  mate  with  the  man  she  loves ;  and  her 
meanest  bondage  is  the  marriage-yoke  that 
holds  her  to  the  man  she  hates. 

No  end  of  nonsense  is  rehashed  as  sentiment. 
The  sacredness  of  our  marriage  system  is 
preached  beyond  all  reason.  No  system  ever 
yet  devised  is  sacred,  unless  sacredness  is  com- 
parative and  measureable:  this  is  sacred,  that 
is  more  sacred,  and  something  else,  most  sacred. 
What  could  be  more  ridiculous  ?  The  horror  of 
adultery  springs  from  vanity,  superstition,  and 
custom  rather  than  from  outraged  virtue.  For 
there  can  be  no  virtue  in  sexual  fidelity  where 
either  party  is  capable  of  violating  the  mar- 
riage vow.  The  sin  of  adultery  is  hypocrisy  or 
deceit.  Everybody  knows  that  thousands  of 
the  noblest  human  beings  have  slipped  the 
bonds  without  suffering  or  inflicting  the  least 
possible  harm ;  that  sexual  fidelity  without  love 
and  contrary  to  wish  is  as  grossly  immoral  as 
prostitution.  Our  marriage  system  is  a  very 
loose  ball-and-socket  or  universal  joint  of  con- 
nection, whereas  true  marriage  is  a  rigid  wiity, 
the  happiness  of  which  is  unconscious  of  its 
cause  and  conscious  only  of  its  being.  This 
union  automatically  dissolves  when  either  party 


192     (WOMAN  FROM  BONDAGE  TO  FREEDOM 

becomes  aware  of  its  irksome  rigidity.  This 
embraces  the  ethics  of  real  marriage  so  far  as 
the  personal  relations  of  the  coupled  are  con- 
cerned. 

Monogamy,  as  an  institution,  is  compara- 
tively recent;  and  it  was  founded  principally 
on  religion,  although  there  are  some  sensible 
secular  reasons  at  its  base.  As  an  institution  it 
is  not  a  complete  success.  It  is  taught  by  the 
professional  religionist  that  monogamy  is  the 
friend  of  woman — her  liberator  and,  through 
this  or  that  brand  of  grace,  her  salvation.  The 
plain  truth  is  that  this  particular  system  has 
driven  more  women  to  prostitution,  directly  and 
indirectly,  than  almost  any  other  cause. 

Prostitution  is  not  a  self-created  evil,  nor 
does  it  originate  in  the  depths  of  innate,  unmit- 
igated depravity.  It  is  a  social  evil  that  springs 
from  many  sources,  one  of  which  is  an  artificial 
attempt  to  thwart  a  powerful  natural  instinct, 
or  the  mistaken  endeavor  to  throttle  rather 
than  to  guide  an  elemental  passion.  Our  form 
of  marriage,  together  with  its  associated  sys- 
tem of  morals,  makes  no  provision  for  the  un- 
married who  for  one  reason  or  another  can  not 
marry,  nor  for  the  mismated  who  are  held 
merely  by  form.  Prostitution,  a  miserable 
makeshift,  ruins  both  men  and  women  while  re- 
sponding to  the  most  imperious  command,  save 


THE   ETHICS   OF    MAKRIAGE,   ETC.  193 

one  (that  of  hunger),  issued  by  Nature  to  her 
living  beings. 

A  few  words  by  Grete  Meisel-Hess,  one  of  the 
deep  thinkers  on  this  subject,  will  help  to  make 
my  meaning  plain.  If  there  were  space  to 
spare,  I  should  like  to  repeat  the  chapter  on 
"The  Necessity  of  Prostitution",  in  her  mis- 
named book,  "The  Sexual  Crisis".  The  book 
is  misnamed,  because  there  can  be  no  crises  in 
the  broad  evolution  of  sexuality.  These  rela- 
tions are  so  fundamentally  a  part  of  life  itself 
that  they  never  can  take  on  the  nature  of  a 
crisis  whilst  life  endures  in  the  orderly  phenom- 
ena of  our  universe. 

"The  necessity  for  prostitution  depends 
mainly  on  social  causes,  which  culminate  in 
our  marriage  system.  The  happy  marriage  of 
the  securely  placed  wife  is  founded  upon  the 
degradation  and  debasement  of  another  woman, 
the  prostitute,  who  is  required  to  become  a 
sexual  instrument  because  she  must  furnish  for 
men  a  preliminary  stage  on  the  way  to  mar- 
riage. The  insistence  upon  two  extremes  for 
neither  of  which  human  nature  is  adapted,  cre- 
ates the  prostitute.  These  extremes  are,  on  the 
one  hand,  the  ideal  of  a  satisfactory  marriage, 
and  on  the  other,  as  the  only  alternative  left 
open  to  women  by  conventional  morality,  the 
demand  that  if  unmarried  they  should  lead  an 
utterly  barren  life  of  renunciation.  The  heaven 


194:       WOMAN    FROM   BONDAGE   TO   FREEDOM 

of  marriage,  the  inferno  of  the  brothel,  or  a 
complete  negation  of  the  sexual  life :  these  are 
the  only  alternatives  for  women — unless  in- 
deed we  accept  Luther's  suggestion  that  'they 
must  all  be  strangled '.  .  .  . 

"We  readily  can  understand  how  men  have 
been  forced  to  organize  the  institution  of  pros- 
titution, for  men  are  simply  incapable  of  en- 
during such  a  state  of  affairs.  Even  women 
can  not  endure  it  without  suffering  both  in  body 
and  in  mind.  Logically  enough,  man  has  found 
a  satisfaction  for  his  own  need  which  is  for- 
bidden to  woman  by  her  very  nature.  ...  In 
verity,  the  burden  of  misery  and  disgrace  that 
falls  upon  the  prostitute,  whilst  the  man  who 
makes  use  of  her  goes  free,  should  attach  to  the 
society  that  renders  possible  and  indeed  inevit- 
able this  degradation  of  the  human  sexual  life. 
.  .  .  Prostitution  is  a  necessity,  a  regular  occu- 
pation, an  economic  livelihood  in  the  capital- 
ist market,  a  mode  of  life  which  millions  of 
women  are  economically  forced  to  adopt". 

Monogamic  marriage  is  a  contract  not  so 
much  between  two  persons  as  between  a  couple 
and  society.  For  its  own  purposes,  society  de- 
mands of  sexual  unions  certain  assurances. 
There  must  be  an  established  order  of  parent- 
age to  secure  the  order  of  succession  in  prop- 
erty rights.  If  society  is  to  exercise  a  guard- 
ianship over  personal  rights,  it  must  be  a  party 


THE   ETHICS   OF    MAREIAGE,   ETC.  195 

to  the  contract  of  marriage  between  couples. 
The  contract  between  the  two  must  be  subordi- 
nate to  that  between  the  couple  and  society. 
Thus  the  ethics  of  marriage  stands  on  two  legs : 
(a)  ethics  governing  the  relations  between 
those  coupled  in  marriage ;  and  (b)  ethics  gov- 
erning the  relations  between  the  married  couple 
and  society.  This  is  the  essence  of  all  questions 
arising  from  the  ethics  of  marriage  and  divorce. 

So  far  as  society  is  concerned,  it  makes  rules 
and  is  satisfied  when  they  are  followed.  It  is 
not  interested  in  the  particular  hardships  of 
its  general  rules,  further  than  to  adjust  differ- 
ences arising  from  the  infractions  that  are 
brought  to  its  attention.  Hideous  immorality 
thrives  under  the  protection  of  society  so  long 
as  this  immorality  is  conventional;  but  uncon- 
ventional virtue  and  immorality  alike  are  liable 
to  social  inquisition.  Good  and  bad  marriages 
have  the  same  social  standing.  Marriage  per- 
mits the  birth  of  children  of  hatred  and  disease 
equally  with  those  of  health  and  love.  Marital 
brutality  stands  on  the  same  level  with  the 
tenderest  of  conjugal  relations.  Society  lacks 
judgment  and  it  never  was  just. 

In  an  elevated  state  of  society  there  would 
be  no  friction  between  the  personal  ethics  of 
the  married  and  the  impersonal  ethics  binding 
the  couple  to  society.  Therefore,  just  in  pro- 
portion as  society  lacks  discrimination  and  soul, 


196       WOMAN   FROM   BONDAGE   TO    FREEDOM 

its  individual  members  are  rightfully  entitled 
to  exercise  discretion  in  their  personal  con- 
duct. Even  the  most  stupid  society  assumes 
that  the  individual  has  some  sense;  for  if  he 
had  none,  there  never  could  have  been  a  social 
state. 

The  best  way  to  elevate  society  is  to  educate 
its  units,  thus  interlocking  their  personal  inter- 
ests and  forcing  the  outflow  into  the  common 
weal.  Nothing  is  gained  by  trying  to  tear  down 
and  build  anew.  Ethics  is  of  slow  growth.  It 
rests  on  the  individual  at  last.  When  the  ma- 
jority of  individuals  comprising  a  state  acquire 
intelligence  enough  to  understand  the  iniquity 
of  a  loveless  marriage,  divorce  will  be  easy,  re- 
spectable, and  free.  When  the  general  intelli- 
gence rises  a  point  or  two,  the  church  will  lose 
its  voice  both  in  marriage  and  divorce.  When 
men  and  women  generally  realize  the  immorality 
of  sexual  relations  unsanctified  by  a  high  mu- 
tual desire,  the  closed  marriage  relations  will 
adjust  themselves  to  the  open  relations  between 
marriage  and  society,  and  prostitution  as  it 
now  exists  will  be  no  more. 

Women  will  not  be  free  until  they  become  in- 
telligent enough  to  see  the  sinfulness  of  their 
present  bonds,  and  clever  enough  to  shake  off 
their  shackles  without  too  much  noise.  When 
they  have  become  mistresses  of  their  own  bod- 
ies and  souls,  church  and  state  will  cease  to 


THE   ETHICS   OF    MARRIAGE,   ETC.  197 

forge  fetters.  The  freedom  of  women — all  they 
can  hope  for,  and  all  they  deserve — lies  in  their 
own  hands.  The  key  to  that  freedom  is  a  little 
more  knowledge  and  adroitness. 


BIRTH  CONTROL 

ATURAL  morality  recognizes  certain 
personal  rights.  For  example,  no 
one  questions  a  person's  right  to 
the  choice  of  food,  clothing,  and 
shelter.  Sane  folk  never  think  of  meddling  in 
the  sexual  affairs  of  others.  No  right-minded 
person  tries  to  tyrannize  over  love.  Religious 
views  are  supposed  to  be  personal,  and  their 
right  of  possession  is  unquestioned.  No  decent 
man  would  force  a  woman  to  become  a  mother 
against  her  will.  By  comparison,  the  act  of 
rape  merely  in  itself,  is  a  virtue.  If  self-respect 
is  anything  more  than  a  pleasing  fiction,  a 
woman  should  be  the  mistress  of  her  own  body. 
Natural  ethics  gives  her  the  right  to  protect 
her  chastity.  Common  decency  permits  her  to 
choose  the  man  who  is  to  father  her  child.  If 
there  are  any  personal  rights  in  this  world  over 
which  church  and  state  should  have  no  control, 
it  is  the  sexual  right  of  a  woman  to  say,  Yes 
and  No!  These  and  similar  rights  are  so  deeply 
imbedded  in  natural  morality  that  no  clear- 
headed, clean-hearted  person  would  wish  to  con- 
trovert them. 

199 


200        WOMAN   FEOM   BONDAGE   TO   FREEDOM 

At  this  point  social  ethics  intervenes.  Natural 
and  social  morality,  so  to  speak,  are  interwoven. 
In  effect,  there  are  no  detached  personal  rights 
existing  as  such  in  a  state  of  society.  For  ex- 
ample, a  man  selects  food  and  clothing  within 
the  loose  limitations  of  the  general  rule  made 
for  the  well-being  of  all,  amongst  whom  he  lives. 
Sexual  relations  are  restricted  by  society.  Love 
is  the  only  social  anarchist  not  in  chains  because 
society  has  found  no  means  to  enslave  it ;  church 
and  state  have  not  been  able  to  govern  it  either 
by  fear  or  by  law.  Eeligious  belief,  largely  a 
matter  of  accident,  is  tractable  because  gravita- 
tional. Enforced  motherhood,  through  mar- 
riage or  otherwise,  is  a  mixed  form  of  slavery. 
Voluntary  motherhood  is  the  glory  of  a  free 
soul.  The  church  for  its  own  purposes,  and  the 
state  for  the  welfare  of  society,  prescribe  reg- 
ulations for  the  sexual  relations  between  men 
and  women.  The  church  with  mingled  sincerity 
and  hypocrisy  stresses  the  future  good  of  the 
soul  in  the  present  restrictions  called  marriage. 
Through  marriage  the  state  seeks  the  good  of 
society  as  a  whole.  In  the  highest  and  best 
sense,  both  church  and  state  have  failed. 

Marriage  then  in  one  form  or  another,  is  the 
general  rule  to  which  men  and  women  in  a 
state  of  society  conform.  Naturally,  this  rule 
can  take  no  account  of  exceptions,  few  or  many. 
Even  with  the  purest  of  purposes,  marriage, 


201 

under  church  and  state,  becomes  a  form  of 
slavery  so  far  as  the  woman  is  concerned. 
Against  the  bondage  of  marriage,  if  not  actu- 
ally out  of  it,  arise  the  evils  of  prostitution  and 
the  many  hardships  attending  other  illicit  sex- 
ual relations.  Under  the  law,  marriage  makes 
the  woman  a  brood  slave.  Legally  or  illegally 
conducted  prostitution  degrades  and  diseases 
the  individual,  and  it  demoralizes  society.  Free 
sexual  intercourse  burdens  society  with  per- 
secutions for  the  crime  of  which  society  itself 
is  guilty;  and  it  debases  society  by  the  brutal 
punishment  it  inflicts  upon  the  innocent.  Un- 
der marriage,  woman  loses  the  right  to  protect 
her  chastity ;  but  even  if  she  retained  that  right 
it  would  be  an  empty  one,  continually  subjected 
as  she  is  to  the  pressure  of  custom  and  the  de- 
sire of  her  husband  whose  employment  of  force 
is  encouraged  by  church  and  state ;  or  she  yields 
to  a  burst  of  her  own  baser  passion. 

Is  it  any  wonder  that  the  supreme  matter  of 
reproduction  is  left  to  chance,  to  brutal  force 
or  gentler  persuasion,  to  psychologic  pressure ; 
or  that  conception  should  result  from  ignorance 
and  the  spurts  of  mere  animal  desire?  Children 
come  when  they  are  not  wanted,  not  needed, 
and  when  they  can  not  be  properly  nourished 
and  nurtured.  Many  of  these  children  are  born 
of  indifference  or  hatred,  of  weakened  mothers 
and  unfit  fathers.  Untold  thousands  have  no 


202        WOMAN   FBOM   BONDAGE   TO    FBEEDOM 

other  heritage  than  disease  and  filth,  and  thou- 
sands of  others,  only  shame.  Millions  of  de- 
fectives are  dumped  on  society  to  be  persecuted 
after  fashions  of  the  poultry  yard.  Alms- 
houses,  jails,  hospitals,  and  expensive  judicial 
machinery  must  be  maintained  for  the  protec- 
tion of  this  same  precious  society. 

Everybody  knows  that  this  is  true;  but  how 
far-reaching  and  how  terrible  this  truth  is,  ev- 
erybody does  not  know  nor  does  everybody 
care. *  As  a  race,  we  are  densely  ignorant, 
cruel,  and  barbarous.  We  do  know  enough  how- 
ever to  realize  that  something  can  be  done  to 
make  a  bad  matter  better.  Many  thousands  of 
noble  men  and  women  have  tried  and  are  trying 
now  to  improve  our  sorry  lot.  There  always  is 
enough  kindness  in  humanity  to  strive  for  bet- 
ter conditions.2 

The  question  is,  "What  shall  be  done?  Shall 
we  re-organize  society?  That  is  a  big  job. 
Shall  we  do  away  with  marriage?  That  is  im- 
practicable. Shall  we  destroy  the  state  and 
start  a  new  system  of  economics  ?  That  is  only 
a  dream.  However  well  it  might  be  if  the  dream 
should  come  to  pass,  certainly  we  are  not  ready 
for  anything  of  the  kind  now.  Shall  we  destroy 
the  church?  First,  we  shall  have  to  enlighten 
the  mind  to  a  degree  beyond  our  present  means ; 

JSee  Woman  and  the  New  Eace  (Margaret  Sanger). 
2  See  Birth  Control  or  The  Limitation  of  Offspring   (Wm.  J. 
Robinson,  M.  D.). 


BIETH   CONTEOL  203 

and  besides,  the  church  will  destroy  itself  with 
its  own  poison — all  it  needs  is  no  opposition. 
As  soon  as  it  becomes  clear  to  the  mass-mind 
that  the  church  and  prostitution  are  equally  re- 
lated to  religion,  one  no  more  than  the  other,  the 
church  as  an  institution  of  slavery  will  pass  as 
many  others  have,  and,  as  it  is  hoped,  all  such 
institutions  must.  Shall  we  wipe  out  prostitu- 
tion! How?  Can  we  do  nothing  then  but  build 
jails  and  asylums'?  Shall  we  go  on  legislating? 
We  may  as  well  take  up  our  little  brooms  to 
sweep  back  the  tides.  We  may  as  well  pass  laws 
against  the  weather  to  protect  shivering  pov- 
erty. Ah,  but  we  have  philanthropists !  So  we 
have,  and  we  have  had  them  for  a  long  time. 
Having  permitted  unmoral  men  and  women  to 
pile  up  vast  riches  at  the  expense  of  others 
under  our  laws,  shall  we  make  other  laws  to 
convert  the  loot  into  "philanthropy",  and  thus 
destroy  the  last  vestige  of  self-respect  still 
clinging  to  the  unfortunate? 

We  have  a  practical  remedy  of  great  prom- 
ise. In  the  present  state  of  affairs,  one  thing 
can  be  done  for  the  boundless  benefit  of  coming 
generations ;  that  is  the  voluntary  reproduction 
of  our  kind.  This  will  have  to  be  determined 
largely  by  the  women  themselves.  There  is  no 
objection  to  a  little  help  from  the  men ;  but  the 
feminist  movement  will  find  it  necessary  to 
agitate  the  wisdom  and  to  set  the  example  in 


204       WOMAN   FROM   BONDAGE   TO   FREEDOM 

practice,  if  it  would  succeed.  Women  will  have 
to  teach  women  how  to  avoid  conception  when 
unwilling  or  unfit  to  become  mothers.  They 
should  be  taught,  who  are  stupid  enough  not  to 
know,  how  sinful  it  is  to  bring  forth  an  unwel- 
come child ;  how  fiendish  it  is  to  thrust  a  human 
being  into  life  if  that  life  must  be  one  of  misery. 
If  every  woman  had  at  hand  safe  means  to 
prevent  conception,  the  millions  of  abortions 
and  miscarriages  annually  trailing  disease  and 
death,  would  be  prevented,  and  untold  anguish 
abolished.  These  nleans  are  available ;  they  are 
as  harmless  as  a  tepid  bath  and  as  pure  as  a 
drop  of  dew.  Physicians  know  and  have  the 
legal  right  to  prescribe  them;  but  doctors  gen- 
erally are  too  hidebound  or  too  mean  to  reveal 
this  knowledge.  Fortunately,  thousands  of 
women  also  have  this  knowledge.  It  is  from 
them  that  the  less  fortunate  sisters  may  hope 
for  relief;  and  this  enlightenment  can  be  given 
successfully  through  an  organization  of  women 
under  the  feminist  movement.  It  should  be 
made  known  universally  that  there  are  no  moral 
nor  other  grounds  against  the  prevention  of 
conceptions;  but  that  there  are  many  reasons 
why  induced  abortions  and  miscarriages  are 
harmful  morally  and  physically ;  that  *  *  race  sui- 
cide" is  not  to  be  feared  whilst  human  nature 
remains  human  nature.  For  men  and  women 
will  be  parents  so  long  as  they  are  men  and 


BIRTH   CONTROL  205 

women.  The  race  is  in  no  danger  of  suicide 
with  the  control  of  births  in  the  possession  of 
women.  On  the  contrary,  the  race  will  grow 
better,  stronger,  happier  with  women  the  mis- 
tresses of  their  own  bodies.  The  want  and  will 
to  reproduce  are  vital  instincts  of  our  nature. 
The  power  and  the  wisdom  to  control  our  re- 
production can  only  strengthen  the  generative 
potentiality  of  our  being. 

Laws  prohibiting  women  from  teaching  their 
sisters  how  to  prevent  conception  are  generally 
disregarded.  It  is  assumed  that  there  is  no 
virtue  in  obeying  an  act  of  legislation  that  is 
vicious,  and  so  vitally  harmful  to  the  race.  In 
the  history  of  mankind,  jails  never  had  much 
terror  for  righteousness.  But  it  is  not  neces- 
sary to  pay  the  extreme  penalty  prescribed  by 
bigoted  law  makers.  The  means  of  preventing 
conception  can  and  should  be  given  to  all  women 
in  a  lawful  manner,  for  the  means  is  a  simple 
whiff  of  knowledge,  easily  imparted  in  a 
whisper. 


WOMEN  AND  THE  GREAT  WAR 


OMEN'S  part  in  the  most  tragic  of 
all  wars,  is  well  known.  Their  help 
has  been  felt  in  every  branch  of  mil- 
itary service,  and  in  all  the  depart- 
ments of  civil  life.  On  both  sides  of  the  Eastern 
battlefront,  they  were  found  fighting  in  the 
trenches,  shoulder  to  shoulder  with  the  men. 
Indeed  several  of  the  belligerent  powers  regu- 
larly enrolled  girls  in  the  fighting  ranks.  The 
Women's  Auxiliary  Army  Corps  was  as  much 
a  part  of  the  British  army  as  was  the  Royal 
Engineers. 

As  manual  laborers  and  fieldhands,  women 
took  the  place  of  the  men ;  as  skilled  laborers, 
their  work  in  the  factories  was  indispensable, 
and  their  endurance  surprising.  Almost  over 
night  wives  and  daughters  became  shop-keepers, 
wholesale  merchants,  traders,  stokers,  and 
drivers.  In  May,  1917,  over  2,000  women  were 
employed  by  the  British  Admiralty,  alone. 

Women  nurses  were  the  goed  angels  to 
broken  and  blinded  men.  Wherever  women  en- 
tered the  professions,  their  work  equaled  that 
of  the  men.  In  a  word,  feminism  was  recog- 

207 


208        WOMAN   FROM   BONDAGE   TO   FREEDOM 

nized  world-over  as  well  as  in  the  warring 
countries.  It  is  admitted  everywhere  that  with- 
out the  cqurageous  efforts  and  the  sacrifices  of 
women,  civilization  now  would  be  in  a  sorry 
plight.  Orphans  were  cared  for;  the  homeless 
were  housed;  the  needy  fed  and  clothed  by 
women.  Nothing  has  been  too  menial  for  their 
willing  hands — nothing  too  arduous  for  their 
weary  bodies — nothing  too  terrible  for  them  to 
face  with  hope  in  their  souls. 

Whenever  women  have  been  called  to  admin- 
istrative and  executive  positions,  they  have 
been  successful;  their  inventive  genius  is 
equaled  only  by  their  enthusiasm;  their  emo- 
tional qualities  have  not  unfitted  them  for  any 
service,  however  trying.  Not  once  have  they 
failed.  Besides  bearing  all  this  unusual  stress 
of  mind  and  body,  they  cared  for  their  children, 
and  they  maintained  their  homes.  Never  again 
shall  it  be  said  that  their  sex  disqualifies  them 
for  any  human  achievement. 

The  noblest  thing  in  the  war  was  done  by  the 
women  of  France  when  they  made  provision 
for  the  children  forced  on  the  wives  and  daugh- 
ters of  the  invaded  countries  by  the  soldiers  of 
the  Central  Powers.  The  French  women  be- 
came at  once  super-Christian,  for  they  arose  to 
the  full  height  of  humanity — beyond  which 
there  is  no  eminence  in  this  world. 

These  women  were  opposed  by  all  the  worst 


WOMEN   AND   THE   GREAT   WAR  209 

and  by  some  of  the  best  elements  of  passion: 
patriotism,  love  of  the  unsullied  home,  disgust, 
hatred,  jealousy — outrage  unspeakable!  Sol- 
diers on  leave,  returning  to  their  families, 
found  there  the  innocent  intruders,  thrust  in 
and  left  by  infamous  enemies.  The  most  of  these 
husbands  and  fathers  were  hardened  by  the 
savagery  of  war;  they  were  so  brutalized  by 
conditions  that  they  could  not  endure  the  pres- 
ence of  such  children  in  their  homes.  It  is  but 
natural  that  soldiers,  blinded  by  cruelty  to  the 
claims  of  innocence,  should  be  deaf  alike  to  the 
wails  of  mercy  and  the  behests  of  justice.  They 
saw  in  these  baby-victims  only  the  hateful  re- 
minders of  their  own  dishonor — the  living  sym- 
bols of  bestiality  that  had  besmeared  their 
homes  during  their  absence.  But  the  splendid 
womanhood  of  France  found  a  means,  at  once 
tactful  and  humane,  of  providing  for  the  de- 
spised and  helpless  little  beings.  Womanhood 
softened  the  cruelty  so  wickedly  inflicted. 
Thanks  to  the  active  influence  of  French  woman- 
hood, the  outcasts  were  adopted  by  the  govern- 
ment, to  be  reared  and  educated  by  the  state. 
No  holier  act  ever  was  performed  by  mankind. 
The  strange  elements  of  courage  are  as  nec- 
essary in  war  as  are  troops  and  armament.  It 
is  owing  to  the  women  of  France,  Belgium,  and 
England  that  the  morale  of  their  fighting-men 
remained  fine  during  hard  and  disheartening 


210       WOMAN   FROM   BONDAGE   TO   FREEDOM 

times.  The  women  kept  up  the  will-power  of 
the  armies  at  war;  and  women  maintained  the 
stability  of  governments  when  it  seemed  that 
anarchy  was  at  hand,  and  that  civilization  must 
crumble  to  dust. 

Courage  is  born  of  motherhood.  Man  is  the 
body  but  woman  is  the  soul  of  the  race.  One 
presides  over  a  spiritual  realm,  at  the  gates  of 
breath;  the  other  fights  at  the  frontiers  of  our 
material  life.  Thus  motherhood,  actual  and 
potential,  always  has  been  the  moral  support  of 
war.  This  seems  strange  when  one  reflects  that 
women  and  children  are  the  chief  sufferers ;  but 
the  reason  is  that  from  motherhood  flows  or- 
derly unselfishness;  that  is  to  say,  motherhood 
is  the  fount  of  ethics.  Motherhood  posits  the 
home;  the  home  posits  the  family;  the  family, 
the  community;  the  community,  the  nation. 
Ethics  assumes  that  the  highest  good  is  attained 
through  personal  sacrifice  to  family,  com- 
munity, country,  race.  Ethics  submerges  the 
instinct  of  self-preservation,  of  creature  com- 
forts, of  individual  interest;  and  the  ethic  im- 
pulse rises  to  those  higher  levels  that  have 
been  found  to  support  the  general  good.  Hence 
on  woman  relies  largely  the  morale  of  embattled 
men. 

This  war  may  or  may  not  determine  the  is- 
sues between  autocracy  and  democracy;  it  may 
or  may  not  hasten  the  adjustment  of  differences 


WOMEX   AND   THE   GREAT   WAR  211 

between  capital  and  labor ;  and  it  may  leave  un- 
solved the  problems  of  militarism,  eugenics,  and 
caste;  but  it  will  free  women  from  many  an 
age-old  bondage.  It  was  in  effect  a  war  be- 
tween civilization  and  barbarism,  in  which  the 
money-changers  had  a  sinster  hand.  The  stakes 
were  the  heaviest  for  which  men  have  fought 
on  the  field  or  played  in  the  Chancelleries  of 
nations. 

Class  distinctions  are  becoming  less  marked. 
Religious  differences  for  the  moment  at  least 
were  forgotten.  One  soldier  did  not  ask  an- 
other, who  fought  at  his  side,  if  their  creeds 
agreed;  neither  did  the  fraternity  of  the 
trenches  cluster  around  the  artificial  standards 
of  caste.  Among  the  belligerent  women  much 
of  the  moonshine  of  title  and  social  standing 
was  put  aside.  The  moonshine  that  would  not 
down  was  found  in  our  own  country,  where  iso- 
lation from  the  horrors  of  war  made  it  hard  for 
the  wife  of  the  profiteer  to  give  up  the  distinc- 
tions founded  on  wealth. 

The  French  soldiery  cared  little  about  the 
outward  forms,  the  ceremonies,  the  dogmas  of 
the  church.  Catholics  and  freethinkers  were 
brothers-in-arms  and  cordial  comrades.  Both 
the  Catholic  mode  of  thought  and  the  freethink- 
ers'  method  of  reasoning,  were  respected  by  all. 
The  morality  of  the  one  was  as  good  as  that  of 
the  other.  Heroism  has  no  room  for  the  differ- 


212       WOMAN   FKOM   BONDAGE   TO   FREEDOM 

ences  of  creed.  Each  soldier  does  his  part  and 
the  rest  is  left  to  God,  or  Fate :  11  faut  ce  qu'il 
faut!  or  as  the  Italians  say,  Chesara  sara!  That 
is  all.  The  brave  priest  and  the  gentle  nun  were 
neither  more  nor  less  because  of  their  faith,  for 
" faith  without  works  is  dead". 

Philosophers  will  inquire  how  this  war  has 
affected  the  status  of  womanhood  in  civilization. 
It  seems  to  us  that  womanhood  has  risen  to 
such  heroic  proportions  that  it  stands  trans- 
figured before  a  background  of  barbarism.  It 
seems  that  the  knell  of  woman's  bondage  has 
sounded ;  and  that  her  economic  standing  never 
more  will  be  the  same.  Onward  through  the 
years,  women  must  be  the  equal  partners  of 
men  in  the  co-operating  for  the  material  and  the 
spiritual  advancement  of  the  race. 

There  is  another,  sadder  phase  of  the  phe- 
nomenon. Millions  of  women  have  been  de- 
bauched by  this  war— and  the  end  is  not  yet  in 
sight.  Prostitution  flowers  along  the  military 
highways  as  it  did  around  the  camps.  It  has 
spread  infection  and  moral  poison  that  will  con- 
taminate the  stream  of  life,  and  the  flow  of  gen- 
erative ethics,  for  many  a  year.  The  general 
tone  of  sexual  morality  has  been  lowered  by 
brutal  force  and  by  a  thousand  insidious  in- 
fluences. The  barriers  reared  by  decency 
through  the  ages  were  broken  down  over  a  large 
part  of  the  habitable  earth.  The  effects  of  all 


WOMEN   AND   THE   GREAT   WAR  213 

this  on  the  status  of  womanhood  in  society,  and 
therefore  on  society  itself,  can  not  be  estimated 
now.  The  third  and  fourth  generations  per- 
haps shall  have  turned  to  dust  before  it  will  be 
possible  to  compute  the  evils,  and  to  appraise 
the  benefits,  flowing  out  of  the  late  war.  We 
hope  that  the  race  has  suffered  no  lasting  harm ; 
that  in  the  fulness  of  time  all  its  wounds  will 
heal  and  leave  no  scars;  and  that  womanhood 
will  rise  to  nobler  heights  through  "the  great 
right  of  excessive  wrong". 


MENTAL  ATTITUDE 

E  are  beginning  to  appreciate  the 
importance  of  point-of-view.  So- 
ciety is  gradually  discovering  the 
need  of  righteousness  in  mental  at- 
titude. We  shall  yet  learn  how  wise  it  is  to  be 
kind — how  ignorant  it  is  to  be  cruel.  Hospi- 
tality to  light  and  change,  hostility  to  darkness 
and  stagnation  must,  in  time,  characterize  the 
mental  attitude  of  humanity. 

So  far  as  we  know  to  the  contrary,  there  is 
no  gain  without  loss.  Change  is  justified  or 
not  by  the  relative  nature  of  the  gain  or  loss. 
As  we  have  put  on  the  first  rags  of  spiritual 
grace  we  have  had  to  lay  off  the  glossy  coat  of 
animal  perfection;  yet  we  conceive  the  change 
from  prehuman  to  human  beings  a  good  one. 
When  man  assumed  the  erect  posture,  he  be- 
came the  living  symbol  of  exalted  ideals. 
Through  continual  conflict  with  a  brute  pro- 
pensity to  walk  on  four  feet,  instead  of  two,  man 
won  his  soul.  But  the  change  of  posture  left 
his  bowels  poorly  supported,  and  it  made  them 
prone  to  disorder.  His  bulging  brain  causes 
him  to  suffer;  his  highly  developed  nerve-cen- 

215 


216        WOMAN   FBOM   BONDAGE   TO   FREEDOM 

tres  easily  degenerate.  While  learning  to  walk 
spiritually,  he  stumbles  and  falls  into  physical 
disease.  His  deft  fingers;,  uncanny  in  their 
skill,  are  in  striking  contrast  with  some  of  his 
other  organs,  which  are  crippled  and  shrink- 
ing. As  an  animal,  man  is  a  failure ;  as  a  demi- 
god, he  is  a  disgrace.  Only  as  a  torch-bearer 
is  he  noble.  Only  in  his  mental  attitude  may  he 
become  divine.  This  hope  justifies  all  his  losses. 
This  hope  is  the  banner  of  his  soul. 

Just  what  primitive  man's  mental  atittude 
was,  remains  speculative.  As  Herbert  Spencer 
suggests,  it  is  not  easy  for  a  grown  person  to 
think  a  child's  thoughts;  so  much  more  difficult 
is  it  to  think  in  terms  of  the  remote  past.  Very 
meager  help  is  to  be  had  in  the  little  we  know 
of  the  psychology  of  the  lowest  among  contem- 
porary peoples.  For  owing  to  many  factors, 
some  of  which  are  hidden,  and  others  of  a  de- 
vious devolutionary  character  hard  to  follow, 
it  is  probable  that  the  thoughts  and  ideas  of  the 
lowest  living  savages  are  different  from  those 
of  the  long-vanished  primitive  people.  Strange 
as  it  may  seem,  and  shocking  as  it  must  be  to 
our  pride,  if  we  would  discover  the  traces  of 
primitive  mental  attitude,  we  must  search,  not 
in  the  dark  cul-de-sacs  of  contemporary  savage 
branches,  but  in  the  bright  main  avenue  along 
which  the  descendants  of  early  man  are  now 
marching  toward  civilization. 


MENTAL   ATTITUDE  217 

The  peculiarities  of  physical  environment 
press  heavily  upon  the  mental  characteristics 
that  determine  social  phenomena.  The  nearer 
we  approach  the  primitive  type  of  mind,  the 
stronger  grows  the  tendency  to  imitate  and  the 
weaker  becomes  the  power  to  reflect.  In  low 
states  of  society,  individuals  live,  as  it  were,  by 
prescription;  social  phenomena  seem  crystal- 
lized ;  and  initiative  appears  to  be  absent.  The 
type  of  the  hut  is  fixed  almost  as  rigidly  as  that 
of  the  nests  of  birds.  The  underdeveloped 
nervous  system  is  well  adapted  to  physical 
hardihood  and  toughness,  but  it  restricts  an 
output  of  muscular  and  mental  energy  equal  to 
that  of  the  more  highly  developed  organism. 

The  faculty  of  observation  in  primitive  man 
necessarily  was  active,  and  therefore  superficial 
in  its  powers.  His  restless  and  perpetual  per- 
ception absorbed  nearly  all  his  mental  energy. 
Among  our  most  advanced  peoples,  the  same 
effect  crops  out  in  artists.  Persons  whose  vo- 
cation it  is  to  observe  and  ceaselessly  to  note 
variations  in  color,  tone,  mass,  line,  and  bal- 
ance, seldom  are  deep  thinkers.  Highly  spe- 
cialized perception,  ceaselessly  exercised, 
leaves  little  time  and  less  energy  for  deliberate 
reflection.  The  same  principle  shows  itself  in 
the  mad  rush  of  our  times  in  pursuit  of  material 
gain.  Obviously,  the  energy  consumed  in  com- 
mercial occupations  can  not  be  employed  for 


218        WOMAN   FEOM   BONDAGE  TO   FREEDOM 

ethical  advancement  any  more  than  in  philo- 
sophic deduction. 

Early  man  probably  was  devoid  of  wonder 
and  incapable  of  astonishment.  He  knew  noth- 
ing of  the  uniformity  of  relationship,  called 
law,  that  colligates  phenomena;  therefore  he 
was  not  surprised  at  anything.  With  no  idea 
of  natural  causation,  his  credulity  was  pro- 
found and  his  curiosity  slight.  It  may  have  re- 
quired hundreds  of  thousands  of  years  for  a 
single  abstract  idea  to  enter  his  mind.  His 
mental  attitude  was  emotional  and  extremely 
variable.  It  was  subject  to  gusts  of  fury — to 
sudden  storms  of  passion.  His  mentality  was 
barometric  and  meteorological.  This  type  of 
mind  is  not  rare  to-day;  and  it  is  painfully 
notable  in  the  conduct  of  mobs  at  lynchings ;  it 
is  commonplace  in  political  and  religious  dem- 
onstrations. For  individual  examples  one  need 
not  look  beyond  personal  acquaintances.  Her- 
bert Spencer  draws  a  faithful  likeness  of  the 
type,  which  includes  some  of  our  friends,  in  his 
description  of  an  ideally  primitive  man :  * '  Gov- 
erned as  he  is  by  despotic  emotions  that  suc- 
cessively depose  one  another,  instead  of  by  a 
council  of  the  emotions  shared  by  all,  the  prim- 
itive man  has  an  explosive,  chaotic,  incalculable 
behavior,  which  makes  combined  action  diffi- 
cult". 

This  persistent  type  of  mind  has  been  the 


MENTAL   ATTITUDE  219 

stumbling-block  of  the  feminist  movement,  just 
as  it  always  has  been  the  barrier  to  all  other 
progressive  enterprises.  Progress  is  possible 
only  where  primitive  inertia  breaks  down.  The 
large  element  of  public  opinion  that  would  rele- 
gate women  to  a  distinct  sphere  of  action  re- 
gardless of  economic  pressure,  legislative  in- 
justice, and  newly  risen  necessities  of  conduct, 
is  primordial.  Public  opinion  is  stupid  when  it 
fails  to  take  account  of  the  inevitable  reactions 
to  the  ceaseless  struggles  of  collective  life. 
Public  opinion  is  primitive  in  attitude  when  it 
would  limit  the  aspirations  of  any  human  be- 
ings, white  or  black,  brown  or  yellow,  male  or 
female.  It  is  primitive  when  it  would  circum- 
scribe any  human  beings  in  their  endeavors  to 
emerge  from  a  hateful  to  a  happier  state.  Pub- 
lic opinion  is  primitive  that  would  uncondition- 
ally limit  the  environment  of  women  to  the  par- 
aphernalia of  the  maternity-ward  or  to  the  four 
walls  of  a  home.  It  is  primtive  public  opinion 
that  would  constrain  the  obligations  of  women 
to  the  bearing  of  babes  merely  to  swell  the 
ranks  of  voters,  religious  sects,  and  soldiers. 
It  is  a  brutally  primitive  public  opinion  that 
would  force  woman  to  ''keep  in  her  place";  the 
spiritual  attitude  of  that  opinion  welcomes 
slavery,  encourages  the  exploitation  of  one  class 
to  fill  the  pockets  of  another  class. 

As  I  have  said,  woman  fell  into  her  position 


220       WOMAN   FROM   BONDAGE   TO   FREEDOM 

naturally  in  early  times ;  and  just  as  naturally 
she  has  tried  to  climb  out  in  later  times.  Like 
man 's,  her  way  has  been  progressive  and  retro- 
gressive by  turns;  and  her  relative  position 
always  has  registered  the  state  of  society.  "The 
habitual  behavior  to  women  among  any  people 
indicates  with  approximate  truth  the  average 
power  of  the  altruistic  sentiments;  and  the  in- 
dication thus  yielded  tells  against  the  character 
of  the  primitive  man.  The  actions  of  the 
stronger  sex  to  the  weaker  among  the  uncivil- 
ized are  frequently  brutal,  and  even  at  best  the 
conduct  is  unsympathetic.  That  slavery  of 
women,  often  joined  with  cruelty  to  them, 
should  be  normal  among  savages,  accepted  as 
right,  not  by  men  only,  but  by  women  them- 
selves, proves  that,  whatever  occasional  dis- 
plays of  altruism  there  may  be,  the  ordinary 
flow  of  altruistic  feeling  is  small".1 

Barbarism  kept  woman  down  for  ages  by 
hard  work  and  heartless  indifference.  Civiliza- 
tion has  kept  her  down  by  treating  her  as  a 
spoiled  child,  by  pampering  her  worst  traits, 
by  making  inadequate  provision  for  her  needs, 
by  neglecting  her  rights  as  a  human  being.  It 
has  been  obvious  for  a  long  time  that  only 
through  woman's  own  intiative  would  her  po- 
sition be  improved.  She  has  taken  this  initia- 

1  Herbert  Spencer. 


MENTAL   ATTITUDE  221 

tive,  which  has  been  followed  by  the  encourag- 
ing and  prophetic  results  known  to  all. 

Woman  made  her  first  great  steps  toward 
freedom  virtually  unaided  by  man.  But  there 
can  be  no  successful  human  movement  without 
the  co-operation,  eventually,  of  both  sexes; 
that  is  to  say,  co-operation  between  the  two 
radically  different  groups  of  sex-characteris- 
tics. For  biologically,  society  is  made  up  of 
composite  individuals  belonging  to  separate  or- 
ders ;  these  are,  loosely  speaking,  male  and  fe- 
male. But  it  must  be  borne  in  mind  that,  eco- 
nomically, society  contains  a  third  factor  that 
is  composed  of  neuters,  parasites,  reactionaries, 
slaves,  and  masters.  The  neuters  are  the  young 
children — mere  dimpled  hopes  of  humanity — 
together  with  the  sexless  crew,  always  of  uncer- 
tain age.  The  numbing  hardships  of  poverty, 
with  its  wretched  deprivations,  desexualize 
hordes  of  human  beings  early  in  life.  The  neg- 
ative mental  attitude  of  these  unfortunate 
drabs  always  hinders  progress.  The  parasites, 
never  content  with  their  pickings,  are  distinct 
social  burdens.  The  reactionaries  are  the  lit- 
tle foxes  that  spoil  the  vines.  The  economic 
slaves  merely  give  sustenance  to  society,  and 
perish.  The  masters  who  wield  the  powers  that 
be,  content  with  the  existing  order,  naturally 
oppose  a  change.  Is  it  any  wonder  that  the  col- 
lective attitude  of  society  is  a  wall  hard  for 


222        WOMAN   FBOM   BONDAGE   TO   FKEEDOM 

woman  to  surmount  in  her  struggles  for 
freedom? 

It  will  be  asked  with  reason,  How  shall  this 
co-operation  of  the  sexes  be  brought  about? 
There  is  only  one  answer,  By  enlightenment. 
Fumbling  in  the  dark  will  not  do,  for  we  have 
tried  that.  Beautiful  theories  will  not  do,  for 
we  have  thousands  of  them  that  hardly  could 
be  improved.  We  must  have  the  practical  ap- 
plication of  ethical  formulae.  We  must  have 
applied  ethics,  as  we  have  applied  mathematics. 
We  must  have  economic  and  social  engineers, 
since  this  is  an  age  of  engineering,  just  as  we 
have  mechanical  and  other  engineers.  Of  eco- 
nomic preachers,  of  social  reformers,  of  legal 
and  religious  pettifoggers,  we  have  enough  and 
to  spare.  We  need  efficiency  engineers  for  the 
different  branches  of  economics,  working  under 
intelligent  organization.  Naturally,  we  look 
for  these  sociologic  efficiency  engineers  among 
the  women  actively  engaged  in  the  feminist 
movement. 

We  are  in  need  of  the  enlightenment  that  will 
enable  the  male  sex  to  see  the  economic  value 
of  men  being  men  and  of  women  being  women ; 
that  is  to  say,  the  importance  of  cultivating  all 
the  best  masculine  characteristics  in  men,  and 
the  need  of  the  assiduous  development  of  the 
best  feminine  qualities  of  the  women.  The 
same  lamp  that  lights  the  way  to  an  orderly  de- 


MENTAL  ATTITUDE  223 

velopment  of  manliness  in  the  male  sex,  and  to 
womanliness  in  the  female  sex,  will  enable  both 
sexes  to  see  the  sanity  of  a  general  ethical  as 
well  as  of  the  special  sexual  co-operation  that 
keeps  the  race  alive,  sustaining  the  gaiety  of 
nations.  Both  sexes  will  be  led  to  see  the  wis- 
dom of  thwarting  the  evil  influences  now  at 
work  in  society;  and  together,  men  and  women 
will  discover  the  means  of  ridding  society  of  its 
enemies.  This  is  the  essence  of  international- 
ism ;  but  the  cause  of  internationalism  never  will 
be  advanced  by  those  who  decry  their  own  na- 
tion. Patriotism  is  a  necessary  step  toward 
internationalism.  Those  who  are  false  to  their 
own  families,  to  their  own  friends,  to  their  own 
country,  are  not  likely  to  be  true  to  the  broader 
principles  of  humanity. 

This  light  will  have  to  be  spread  by  the  prop- 
aganda of  the  feminist  movement — which  really 
should  be  called  the  humanist  movement — until 
both  men  and  women  can  see  clearly  that  there 
is,  in  actuality,  no  woman's  movement  involv- 
ing merely  woman's  rights,  but  rather  that 
there  is  a  progressive  human  movement,  now 
headed  by  women,  which  involves  the  rights 
equally  of  both  sexes. 

Society  must  be  taught  by  practical  means, 
rather  than  by  precept,  the  importance  of  a 
righteous  mental  attitude;  widespread  organi- 
zation must  demonstrate  the  necessity  of  this 


224       WOMAN   FROM   BONDAGE   TO    FREEDOM 

imponderable ;  and  it  must  show  the  efficiency  of 
sex-co-operation  in  the  successful  pursuit  of  a 
civilization  that  shall  know,  economically, 
neither  color  of  skin  nor  prejudice  of  religion, 
neither  sex  nor  caste ;  that  shall  tolerate  neither 
master  nor  slave ;  that  shall  permit  neither  the 
overrich  nor  the  miserably  poor  to  disgrace 
mankind  by  their  presence. 

Slowly  dawns  the  day  of  enlightenment  for 
humanity.  As  superficial  observation  and  in- 
cessant perception  of  earlier  periods  gave  way 
to  reflection,  so  will  the  spiritual  day  follow  the 
night  of  materialism.  Humanity  has  developed 
eyes  of  the  mind,  and  sentiment  has  placed  them 
in  the  soul.  Enhanced  consciousness  thrills  an 
ever-increasing  number  of  men  and  women.  The 
mental  attitude  of  mankind  is  painfully  rising 
from  its  knees  to  stand  erect.  Human  vision 
has  enlarged  its  field.  Multitudes  already  see 
through  the  eyes  of  the  soul.  These  eyes  de- 
mand of  the  mind  an  attitude  that  was  impos- 
sible to  our  early  progenitors.  The  necessity 
for  divers  points-of-view  has  become  plain. 
The  light  of  civilization  may  be  expressed  per- 
haps in  terms  that  imply  diversity  of  view- 
points. Take  for  example  such  a  commonplace 
thing  as  a  tree : 

The  artist  looks  upon  a  tree  and  sees  masses, 
lines,  tones,  shadows,  and  colors,  through  a 
gauze  of  air  and  the  medium  of  his  own  person- 


MEXTAL  ATTITUDE  225 

ality.  He  sees  these  things  in  their  relations,  and 
from  their  relationship  he  draws  expressive  de- 
ductions which  he  unifies  and  vivifies  with  soul. 
He  accents  the  beautiful  even  in  noting  the 
ugly.  To  him,  objects  turn  into  the  rhetoric  of 
thought,  into  a  mood  of  being,  or  as  Amiel  says, 
into  a  state  of  mind. 

It  is  very  fine  to  see  a  tree  as  an  artist  sees 
it,  for  he  looks  upon  it  through  one  of  the  little 
lenses  of  the  soul.  Unless  he  is  a  very  gifted 
artist,  he  never  suspects  that  the  soul  has  a 
thousand  other  aesthetic  eyes  longing  to  behold 
this  ordinary  object. 

The  student  in  science  looks  upon  a  tree 
through  very  different  eyes.  He  sees  family, 
and  he  peers  into  function.  He  observes  the 
chemistry  of  cell-action,  and  he  even  may  dream 
of  cell-intelligence.  He  tries  to  account  for  the 
play  between  chlorophyl  and  sunlight;  and  he 
constructs  beautiful  theories  in  a  vain  effort  to 
explain  the  two  phases  of  heliotropism.  He 
thinks  he  sees  how  the  cells  overcome  gravity 
to  a  varying  degree ;  and  he  notes  carefully  the 
fixed  habits  of  consciousness  shown  in  constant 
patterns,  which  to  him  form  variety  of  species. 

It  is  very  wonderful  to  see  a  tree  as  a  student 
in  science  sees  it ;  but  he  also  looks  through  only 
one  of  the  little  lenses  of  the  soul.  Unless  he  is 
a  very  wise  student,  he  never  suspects  how  lit- 
tle he  sees  of  a  tree. 


226       WOMAN   FROM   BONDAGE   TO    FREEDOM 

The  religionist  looks  upon  a  tree  and  sees  one 
of  the  many  commonplace  things  God-given  to 
man.  "With  commendable  meekness,  he  thanks 
God  for  the  beauty  of  trees  and  for  the  comfort 
they  give.  In  their  manifold  service  to  man,  he 
sees  the  kindly  wisdom  of  Providence.  He  be- 
holds a  tree  through  another  little  lens  of  the 
soul;  and  unless  he  has  the  inspiration  of  a 
prophet,  he  never  suspects  how  little  his  one 
little  eye  sees  of  a  tree. 

The  moralist  looks  upon  a  tree  and  beholds 
ethical  parallelism.  He  does  not,  ordinarily, 
ponder  whether  environment  and  psychical 
lines  intersect  or  run  parallel.  He  only  sees  in 
a  splendid  tree  that  which  suggests  rectitude 
of  spirit;  and  the  thought  leaps  to  his  brain: 
How  fine  a  thing  it  is  to  be  aplomb  of  soul — up- 
right and  proportionate  in  character — indiffer- 
ent to  the  breath  of  cavil  as  the  oak  to  the  quar- 
ter of  the  wind ! 

To  him,  a  tree  is  symbolic;  therefore  he  re- 
gards an  ugly  tree  with  aversion.  The  deformed 
trunk  and  the  unsightly  limbs  speak  to  him  of 
moral  obliquity.  He  applies  the  axe  with 
sorrow,  if  he  possess  greatness  of  soul;  but  if 
his  soul  is  small,  he  swings  the  axe  with  the  un- 
feeling stroke  of  a  Javert,  an  executioner  of  the 
law — or  with  the  smug  content  of  a  Calvinist 
inquisitor.  He  sees  a  tree  through  another 


MENTAL  ATTITUDE  227 

little  lens  of  the  soul,  but  lie  never  suspects  how 
little  he  sees  of  a  tree. 

The  poet  looks  upon  a  tree,  and  sees  all  its 
leaves  alive  with  dreams.  Fairies  are  every- 
where among  the  boughs ;  and  all  the  branches 
are  highways  and  by-ways  of  travel.  He  sees 
the  play  of  color,  the  glints  of  light,  as  faintly 
twinkling  stars  in  airy  pools  of  shadow.  He 
sees  the  happy  homes  of  birds,  where  trysting 
lovers  meet,  and  a  whole  world  of  joyous  in- 
sect-life; or  else 

"Upon  those  boughs  which  shake  against  the  cold, — 
Bare   ruined  choirs,  where  late  the  sweet  birds 
sang' ', 

behold  the  symbol  of  mortal  tragedy !  He  sees 
the  pastoral  days  emerge  bright  and  free  from 
their  barbaric  gloom ;  and  out  of  these  days  he 
makes  golden  poems  to  gladden  the  heart  of 
man. 

He  sees  how  close  trees  ever  have  been  to  the 
human  heart,  and  he  feels  again  all  the  won- 
drous influences  they  have  had  upon  the  mind ; 
he  knows  how  helpful  they  have  been  to  the  soul. 
He  sees  parenthood  and  brotherhood  and  com- 
radeship in  trees.  He  sees  religion  in  their 
shadows  and  hope  in  their  blossoms.  He  catches 
glimpses  of  a  strange  spirit  that  has  been  im- 
prisoned by  Sculpture  in  the  stone  of  Gothic 
structures.  He  walks  among  trees  with  venera- 


228        WOMAN   FEOM   BONDAGE   TO   FREEDOM 

tion.  He  puts  forth  his  hands  to  touch  them 
affectionately.  He  holds  converse  with  them 
readily  and  easily,  as  with  his  own  kind.  He 
feels  an  awe  in  their  presence  that  he  never 
feels  in  the  presence  of  men.  And  he  knows, 
perhaps  better  than  the  others,  that  he  looks 
upon  a  tree  through  only  one  small  eye  of  the 
soul.  And  if  he  is  a  great  poet,  he  becomes  en- 
chanted with  the  wonderment  of  it  all ;  and  this 
enchantment  he  passes  on  through  the  genera- 
tions of  life  to  far-off  epochs. 

Now  for  the  sake  of  antithesis,  let  us  take  an- 
other example,  Woman.  The  average  man  too 
long  has  looked  upon  the  female  of  his  kind 
principally  through  the  little  pig-eye  slit,  which 
sees  only  sex.  His  eyes  are  no  better  than 
button-holes  burned  in  a  blanket — and  they  are 
just  about  as  perceptive.  His  cunning  little 
primitive  eye  is  no  improvement  on  the  brute's;, 
his  optical  evolution  ceased  in  a  fringe  of 
lashes.  When  he  sees  sex,  he  thinks  he  sees  all 
there  is  to  woman.  As  through  a  glass  darkly 
he  regards  her  as  a  beast  of  burden,  as  a  thing 
of  comfort,  as  the  breeder  of  his  spawn,  as 
the  warder  of  his  brood,  as  the  unpaid  keeper  of 
his  house.  He  is  as  indifferent  to  her  rights  as 
he  is  sensitive  to  his  own.  He  is  horrified  at 
the  thought  of  a  vote  in  her  hands.  He  believes 
himself  to  be  a  special  creation  of  Providence, 
and  he  is  convinced  that  woman  was  an  after- 


MENTAL  ATTITUDE  229 

thought  for  his  benefit.  His  attitude  conforms 
to  his  spiritual  blindness. 

There  are  other  men — good  men — who  re- 
gard women  through  eyes  that  see  only  moth- 
ers, sisters,  and  wives.  These  men  entertain 
sentiments  born  of  a  vision  that  is  fair,  as  far 
as  it  goes.  But  they  can  not  see  the  slaves  of 
economic  bondage,  nor  the  drowning  women 
caught  in  the  rising  flood  of  altered  social  con- 
ditions. The  little  eyes  of  these  men  see  both 
sex  and  self-sacrifice,  but  they  are  incapable 
of  broader  spiritual  vision;  their  eyes  are 
adapted  only  to  the  twilight  of  sentiment  and 
to  the  half-light  of  justice.  At  best,  they  treat 
women  kindly ;  at  worst,  indifferently ;  and  they 
mistake  condescension  for  comradship.  Sleek 
and  rotund,  they  go  through  life  never  once  sus- 
pecting how  blind  they  are. 

There  are  other  men  who  see  through  the 
eyes  of  the  soul  by  the  light  of  reason.  These 
men  behold  in  women  something  higher  than 
sex,  something  holier  than  sacrifice:  the  right 
to  relative  justice.  Such  men  see  a  saintliness 
in  motherhood  that  transcends  natural  acci- 
dent; they  acknowledge  the  sustaining  graces 
of  womanly  companionship;  they  feel  its  rap- 
ture and  warmth;  they  recognize  the  dignity 
of  her  character,  the  sanctity  of  her  person, 
and  the  possibilities  of  her  destiny.  They  see 
beauty  in  her  form,  loveliness  in  her  ways, 


230        WOMAN"   FBOM   BONDAGE   TO   FREEDOM 

and  they  fancy  that  they  see  an  aura  called 
divine  hovering  about  her.  They  see  ail  her 
rights  too  clearly  to  talk  of  "granting  her 
privileges."  In  her  personality  they  behold 
the  most  of  human  hope.  For  they  see  that 
woman  symbolizes  an  endless  avenue  of  evolu- 
tion; that  she  may  be  likened  to  a  poem  of 
promise;  that  she  represents  progression;  and 
that  she  is  double-wombed,  being  psychical  as 
well  as  physical ;  and  that  she  is  double-germed, 
having  spiritual  as  well  as  protoplasmic  pos- 
sibilities; that  she  stands  for  infinity,  because 
she  suggests  endless  development,  whereas  man 
represents  only  a  blind  alley  branching  off  the 
highway  of  progress,  and  symbolizing  power 
rather  than  promise;  that  he  is  too  imperfect 
to  represent  infinity;  that  in  terms  of  duration, 
man  expresses  the  immediate  present  whilst 
woman,  through  her  babe,  expresses  the  endless 
future. 

Once  man's  spiritual  vision  shall  be  broad 
enough  to  encompass  these  things,  his  attitude 
will  change ;  and  he  will  perceive  it  to  be  a  duty, 
a  privilege,  and  a  pleasure  to  co-operate  with 
woman  in  her  efforts  to  reach  her  highest  pos- 
sibilities. For  as  the  poet  says : 

On  this  soft  anvil  all  the  world  was  made. 


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AN  EPOCH-MAKING  BOOK 

Never-Told  Tales 

GRAPHIC  STORIES  OF  THE  DISASTROUS 
RESULTS  OF  SEXUAL  IGNORANCE 

By 

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Editor  of  tJie  American  Journal  of  Urology  and  of  The  Critic  and  Guide 


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The  Sexual  Crisis 

A  CRITIQUE  OF  OUR  SEX  LffE 
A  Psychologic  and  Sociologic  Study 

By  CRETE    MEISEL-HESS 
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Absolutely  free  from  any  cant,  hypocrisy,  falsehood, 
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SEX  MORALITY 

PAST,  PRESENT  AND  FUTURE 

Will  monogamy  or  variety  prevail 
in  the  future  ? 

Is  continence  injurious  ? 

Are  extra  -  marital  relations  ever 
justifiable  ? 

Should  there  be  one  moral  stand- 
ard for  men  and  women  ? 

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orthodox  conservatives.  No  matter  what  your 
opinion  on  the  subject  may  be,  no  matter  whether 
your  ideas  on  the  relations  of  the  sexes  are  those 
of  the  1  5th,  20th  or  25th  century,  you  should 
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HERE  ARE  THE  TITLES  OF  THE  ESSAYS: 

1.  Sexual  Abstinence  and  Health. 

2.  Sleep,  the  Will  to  Sleep,  and  Insomnia. 

3.  Masked  Onanism  (Disguised  Masturbation). 

4.  Masked  Homosexuality. 

5.  On  Suicide. 

6.  Obsessions :  Then*  Causes  and  Treatment 

7.  Obsessive  Doubts. 

8.  A  Contribution  to  the  Study  of  Exhibitionism. 

9.  The  Neurotic  as  an  Actor. 

10.  The  Masked  Piety  of  the  Neurotic. 

11.  Time  in  its  Relationship  to  the  Neurotic. 

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MARRIED    LIFE 

and    HAPPINESS 


=OR= 


LOVE  AND  COMFORT  IN  THE  HOME 

By 

WILLIAM  J.  ROBINSON,  M.D. 


This  is  Dr.  Robinson's  nineteenth  and  best  book,  that  is,  best 
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use  superlatives.  Every  page  of  it  is  crowded  with  advice  and  in- 
formation —  which  mean  Love  and  Happiness  and  conservation  of 
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It  is  the  most  original  journal  in  the  country.  It  is  the  only 
©aa  of  its  kind,  and  is  interesting  from  cover  to  cover.  There  is  no 
routine,  dead  matter  in  it.  ^  It  is  one  of  the  very  few  journals 
that  is  opened  with  anticipation  just  as  soon  as  it  is  received  and 
of  which  every  line  is  read  with  real  interest. 

Not  only  are  the  special  problems  of  the  medical  profession  itself 
dealt  with  in  a  vigorous  and  progressive  spirit,  but  the  larger,  social 
aspects  of  medicine  and  physiology  are  discussed  in  a  fearless  and 
radical  manner. 

Many  problems  untouched  by  other  publications,  such  as  the  sex 
question  in  all  its  varied  phases,  the  economic  causes  of  disease  and 
other  problems  in  medical  sociology,  are  treated  boldly  and  freely 
from  the  standpoint  of  modern  science.  In  discussing  questions 
which  are  considered  taboo  by  the  hyper-conservative,  the  editor 
says  what  he  wants  to  say  very  plainly  without  regard  for  Mrs. 
Grundy. 

THE  CRITIC  AND  GUIDE  was  a  pioneer  in  the  propaganda  for 
birth  control,  venereal  prophylaxis,  sex  education  of  the  young,  and 
free  discussion  of  sexual  problems  in  general.  It  contains  more 
interesting  and  outspoken  matter  on  these  subjects  than  any  other 
journal. 

While  of  great  value  to  the  practitioner  for  therapeutic  sugges- 
tions of  a  practical,  up-to-date  and  definite  character,  its  editorials 
and  special  articles  are  what  make  THE  CRITIC  AND  GUIDE  unique 
among  ic  :*nals,  read  eagerly  alike  by  the  medical  profession  and 
the  intelligent  laity. 


PUBLISHED  MONTHLY 
TWO  DOLLARS  A  YEAR 


12  MT.  MORRIS  PARK  W.  NEW  YORK  CITY 


